Pushing the envelope

Mile splits for the Feb. 8 Melbourne, FL half-marathon

I was going through the stats of my last two longest runs, including the stats from the Feb. 8th half-marathon and found something interesting...


Mile splits for Feb. 14 seven mile long run

One of my running goals going into 2009 was to push my pace a little more than I'm used to. Since I started running in mid-2007, I've been pretty conservative about my pace during training runs. A lot of this had to do with a fear of getting injured, and not really knowing what my limits were coming off of such a long layoff (25 years to be exact).

If there's one thing my run in the 2008 Chicago marathon taught me is that my body is quite capable of handling almost anything. The pain I fought through to finish that race made me realize that if I push myself a little harder, my body will know what to do.

While training for the Melbourne half-marathon, one goal was to make it a point to record negative-splits in my long runs. Basically, negative-splits are when you run the 2nd half of your route faster than the first. This saves energy for when you need it most- near the end. In looking at the two charts, I've been doing just that. It paid off at Melbourne by posting a personal best in the half-marathon. The nice thing is my body is handling it pretty well and I've been able to recover from those runs much faster than this time last year. I hope to keep it up- it can only make me stronger.

In other news... I can say with fair certainty that the rather serious left knee issue I experienced since early January has disappeared! My long runs of plus 7-miles have been pain free and I'm quite smitten about it. It's boosted my confidence enough to know that I can pretty much lick those sorts of injuries fairly quickly if I do things right- and at least know what caused it. In this case I think it was the heavy treadmill work I did after Christmas. I just hate that horrible thing.

Lastly, running this winter has been difficult at best. I've resorted to staying fit with smaller runs when I can during the week, and really concentrating on my long runs on the weekend. It seems to be working out just fine. This Saturday I have 16 miles on the schedule, and a 20 mile run the first weekend of March.

The St. Louis marathon is only seven weeks away (gulp). I have some catching up to do.

...and I really should blog more. Seriously.