Marathon training, day 10

ORN: 4 miles of speedwork today, plus some light weights. As I said in a previous post, I have been looking at some of the various running blogs and websites, and I am not happy with the calculators which are supposed to indicate my "ideal" speeds for endurance runs or for speedwork. Many of them call for speedwork which is only slightly faster than the pace which I had been doing for my endurance runs, and I frankly find it hard to believe that running a 8:15 pace ( as opposed to an 8:30 pace) for half a mile at a time will help, especially since my recovery pace is supposed to be close to a 9:30 pace.

So, today I alternated between a relaxed jog (about a 9 minute pace), and a pace which I considered to be "real" speedwork (about a 7:15 pace). I only did 4 miles (alternating every half-mile), but plan on picking up the pace and increasing the number of repititions over the next couple months.

I'm not really expecting to see much improvement by the time the Martian Marathon rolls around. To be honest, my primary goal for finishing this one isn't bound by time - it's simply to actually run the thing. I've never done a marathon, so completing it is my goal. I'll make a time goal for my second one.

(Of course, I do have, in my head, a "good" time and a "great" time in mind for the marathon - but I'll keep those secret until after I have done it. They're not that ambitious though.)