Bugger.
You know how I’ve set myself the goal of the landmark sub 3 hour marathon for next year? And how 4 runs ago I was pleased to get back to my pre-injury PB 10 mile time of 1:15 (7.30 m/m)? Yesterday I was over the moon to do it in 1:14.43 (just under 7 m/m).
Today I started looking for flattest/ fastest marathon courses for next year. This lead me to Runners World website and from there to training plans and an equivalence calculator. ie, if you can run 5 miles in X you can run 10 miles in Y.
It turns out the sub 3 is equivalent to a 10 mile time of 1:03.46 (6.20 m/m). Oh dear.
The (10 week) training plan said week 1: do a 3 mile run in18 minutes!
Just been out and ran my chubby little heart out and it took me 19.43, which (taking off someone stopping me for directions!) I reckon was about 6.32 m/m.
Holy, holy crap.
Mountain to climb. That was hellish hard. I really wanted to stop for virtually all of it and I was still 30+ seconds per mile off the pace.
I suppose it’s better that I’ve got a realistic goal, but it’s a bit of a gutter just how hard and far away it is.
Still, if it was easy it wouldn’t be a landmark.
I’ve knocked nearly a minute per mile off my time in 2 weeks and still have 30 seconds to go to reach the starting point!
Larf!
Buck.