Running

Swimming.  Down and back 66 times in about 36:30.  Will swim some more tonight and lift.

I'm done blogging for this week because I won't be running again until the marathon on Saturday.  It just gets me frustrated to record no running miles.  I will swim and lift the rest of this week and hopefully my achilles will be fine for the marathon.

Not sure what the marathon has in store for me.  I'm pretty sure I would have come close to my BQ mark had I not started having the problems with my leg.  Obviously the miles have dropped a lot over the last few weeks.  We'll see how it goes.

5.06 at 8:11 pace.

From everything I've read, I should keep running even though the achilles has given me problems. I felt pretty good on this run. Went south from Willow Park. It was pancake flat. I'm making a more concerted effort to ice and stretch.

4.0 easy on the treadmill.  Achilles didn't feel as good as the prior day, but felt ok. 

First off, a great race and a little over a 22 minute PR.  After the SLC marathon last month I thought I had it in me to hit my BQ mark of 3:10:59, but over the last 3 weeks I’ve struggled with my training due to a sore right achilles.  Only put in about 20 miles last week and about 30 the week before, so I was not very hopeful for a good result today.

I felt great for pretty much the whole race.  I used the course tool on the blog and was going to try and hit the following splits based on the tool:

Mile 8    57:42

Mile 13 1:35:00

Mile 17 2:05:03

Mile 24 2:55:05

Mile 25 3:02:27

I was right on target (and a little ahead) for each of the above splits and seeing this just helped me feel more confident as the race went on.  I felt especially good from about miles 15 to 20, and then I started to struggle, but I was still able to hold a descent pace.  The downhill in the canyon helped, but I think I overestimated how much it would really help me. I realized I was going to have a hard time hitting the BQ mark at about mile 24.  I was struggling both physically and mentally.  Here are the splits:

Overall, I couldn’t be happier considering how little I have trained over the last 3 weeks.  I was able to push through some pain and this race really gives me a lot of confidence that I’ll be able to drop my time even more as I go throughout the year.