My thought about the Ogden half marathon is that I'd like to run 1:30. I've based that on my 1:33:38 in the Houston half marathon in January. I figure knocking 3:30 off my time is aggressive but thought it was a worthwhile goal. Another reason to go after 1:30 is that it's the masters' qualifying time for the New York City marathon. I haven't had a strong desire to run in NYC but Continental Airlines is a big corporate sponsor and it may be fun to “say I did it”. The NYC marathon, like many marathons selects participants via a lottery. However, by running a certain qualifying time you can bypass the lottery. (Speaking of lottery, the St. George marathon lottery opens tomorrow.) I suppose I'm stupid enough to think I can run a 1:30. After all, the course starts above 5,000 feet in elevation and has steep hills (mostly downhill). So I've been giving myself a prep talk about training seriously, doing all the right things, etc. So I think with discipline I can do it.
Well, today I took a few minutes to look at race equivalent converters. Based on my fastest recent races, 1:30 is out of reach. On top of that, I get slower (by converters standards) the longer the distance. This is all very disappointing. However, I'm not giving up on 1:30. That's what I'm training for. I also hope to finish in the top 5 of my age group.
[turn on sarcastic voice] “It's good to have goals.”
4 comments:
Cory, are you going to let a converter set your goals? DON'T!! With the right training (not to be confused with excessive amount of training) and a little bit of luck (let's face it, for a good performance, we need the stars to line up as well: weather and how you feel that particular day) it is WITHIN reach. I say go for it. Look how far you've been since I first met you, did you ever think that you would be running the way you do now?
I am VERY supportive of the New York idea - I really enjoyed NY the last time we were there, I'm always up for another trip!
Thank you for the comment, Steph. I appreciate you putting things in perspective. Sometimes I have to be reminded that I've only been running for 2 years. It's easy to see the improvement when I look at my race times over the past couple of year; not so easy when I just look at it from day to day.
Thank you again for the encouragement and I will be going for 1:30.
P -
It's easy for you to go to NYC; not necessarily so easy for me to run a marathon in NYC!
cnb
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