Wednesday's Workout and Marathon Goals...

According to Janda, as of Wednesday, there were 2 hard workouts left before LA. One last Wednesday, and one this upcoming Tuesday. And they're workouts that will definitely keep someone honest. The prescription was 2 mile warm-up, 2 x 2mile on the track at 10 seconds faster than half marathon pace. Yeepers. 2 mile repeats on a track - alone?? And to add insult to injury, I had to go after work. I'm soooo not an afternoon runner. This was going to take serious mental toughness.

Felt miserable on my warm-up, and thought about trashing the workout. Then thought "well, the easy thing to do would be to bail. And the easy thing would give me just one more excuse for why I can say I didn't run well in LA. I'm not interested in excuses". Hopped over the padlocked fence (although more gingerly than last week. With a week and a half left to LA, I was determined to not hurt myself on that stupid fence). Had the conversation about focusing, digging deep, and making this workout worth my time.

First 2 mile repeat:
7:12, 7:25 for 14:38

Felt decent, although that last mile was HARD! Didn't take much rest in between. Not bc I didn't want the rest, but bc I wanted to power through and be done w/ the workout. Hee.

Second 2 mile repeat:
7:18, 7:12 for 14:30

So all in all, good workout. Track workouts alone are just hard. Plain and simple. I do much better when I have someone to chase, or someone screeching at me. But definitely good work. And faster than it was supposed to be. I'll get this pacing thing down one of these days.

So as I go into my last weekend before the marathon, I've been thinking about real goals for this race. And sure, I have the normal "finish without being injured" goal, and the "finish faster than than my worst marathon time", but I'm talking real goals.

This will be marathon #6 for me. I know how to run the race, and I've proven over the last few that I'm getting much smarter at racing the distance. I've put in a lot of solid training for LA, and I want to hold myself accountable to a real goal. A goal that will force me to push harder during the race, and keep me focused.

I'm always petrified to make my goal "qualify for Boston", bc if I don't, there's the letdown at the end of the race, despite the fact that I may have PRd or ran a great race. But if there's something this training has proven to me, it's that I deliver when I dig deep to see what I'm made of. So I'm saying it right now: my goal for LA is to run a qualifying time for Boston. Now it's in black and white, and I'm holding myself to it.

My last 2 marathons have been Baystate 2009: 3:42: 20 and Twin Cities 2008: 3:42:48. I simply need to find 80 seconds over the course of 26.2 miles. And I will. In LA. In 9 short days.