Race pace

Workout of the day (WOD): 10 miles at marathon race pace. My marathon goal is to beat Oprah finish under 04:30:00; that is a consistent 10:18 per mile... for 26 miles, 385 yards. I ran my first marathon in 04:55:00, and because it was the first I had absolutely no time expectations. My goal was to finish on my feet.

Today's mid-week tempo run was designed to help me get a feel of race pace and a feel for sustaining that pace over 26.2 miles (I know its only Tuesday, but every run outside of the weekend long run is usually referred to as a mid-week run).  After two days of rest, I got up early to get after it.

I started with an easy mile, then stopped to stretch. I felt good for the next four miles then started to get a little hungry. I popped in a couple Gatorade chews, took a sip of water and kept it moving. (Side note: I love these Gatorade chews. I swore by them while training for the Chicago Marathon last year and I still do.)

The orange are my fav

Around mile 7, I started to get tired. I knew I could finish, but I didn't expect to feel tired at this point, or at all actually. I wouldn't categorize it as an easy pace, but it wasn't exactly hard either. I was still in the target range on the Borg RPE scale:

As I started to feel uncomfortable, I also started to worry about my pace and my goal. Will I be able to sustain this pace? Is my goal too ambitious? Will I be able to accomplish it? I tried to push these doubts from my mind and not let them get me down. Let's focus on the positives:

• I finished the workout as planned, slightly faster than race pace at an average 10:08 per mile. 
• When I think about it, I probably could have run another 3 miles at that pace.
• But thats only half way. Half way there.

I'm going to have to train hard and find a way to keep this up for the second half of the race. This is going to be harder than I expected; but I am healthy, strong, determined and ready for the challenge. 68 days and counting ...

How is your race training going? Are you on track to meeting your goals?

-Run

PS. Read more about the Beat Oprah marathon goal and other famous Marine Corps Marathon finishers here.

PPS. Did Oprah have abs?