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Marathon training is officially underway. I expect my running will continue to be focused until April 2015 before I exhale. It's one of the reasons why I decided to skip a spring marathon this year. The Pfitz 18/70 plan calls for 57m this week. Additional miles next week. Like I said, time to get serious.
My running has gone pretty much as planned in the last month. My PF in my left heel has completely disappeared. It had to be the road camber. I've consciously tried to run in the middle of the road on less busy streets and my long runs have been moved to the crushed gravel surface of the Prairie Path. Not too many people could rid themselves of PF by running more. But it appears that is what I've done.
My last pacing assignment of the year at the Michelob Ultra 13.1 went perfectly. We finished exactly at 1:45 and ran consistently. Our mile pace never varied more than four seconds off the 8:01 pace and no more than one second on half of the miles. We ran with a great group. Three women who were attempting PRs (one of them who looked shockingly like Kara Goucher) and one guy in a cardboard birthday hat because it was his birthday. One of them hung near us for the entire race and got her PR by four minutes (great job Ashleigh). Not sure about the rest of them. Everyone seemed to approve of our pacing.
Walter and I driving the 8:01 bus
In a weird twist, I managed to grab some CARA race circuit points....as a pacer! The 9th place finish in my age group got me into 15th place overall despite only racing one out of eight races so far.
Last week was the neighborhood Super Strive for Five 5k race. I wanted to defend my AG title and at least be the fastest guy in my zip code. I went out too fast in the first half mile which probably kept me from running a PR. I finished in 21:04 which is my course record by two seconds and got 1st place. Splits were 6:38, 6:50 and 7:33 (6:49). But the coolest part of the race was watching my son get a 3rd place medal. He ran/walked it with my wife but there were only three boys under 10 who ran. You can't control who shows up.
Next on the race list is the Elmhurst 4 on the 4th where I want/need to go sub 28:00.
