Taking a leap of faith: 2 months until Boston

Okay, enough about the BQ changes and time to think about the Boston Marathon that is actually next - which was 2 months away as of Friday. With 2 months to go, I always set down and assess/reflect where I am at.

Boston 2010: Big big butterflies for my Beantown debut. This was the first time that Sarah had coached me, and I was just getting used to the high mileage, longer runs, and tempo runs. Ultimately: 3:38:51.

Rochester 2010: Mileage was high and I was doing killer track workouts. Sleep deprived and was preparing my master's comps. Ultimately: 3:35:54

My mileage obviously is lower than "usual." But as far as total time that I put into training, it is much higher than normal. I am still completely stoked about my 5k/10k PR experience during my 8 mile race last weekend. And also, the shower and bacherlorette parties were a ton of fun:

This week's training was interesting:

Sunday: 15 miles at 8:45 pace - not sure how I went that fast, seeing as I felt fairly sore from Saturday's race:

Monday: Off. First rest day of no running, no cross-training, since January 17th. Felt a little strange, but probably needed it.

Tuesday: 10 mile run with fartleks of varying lengths thrown in.

Wednesday: 45 minutes on the elliptical, 40 minute walk. Just couldn't fit the swim in, and I figured a hilly walk was better than nothing.

Thursday: Beautiful 6 mile run. That was the inspiration for the "Hope Springs" poem. Lately, I haven't been doing morning runs during the week, and this was a great one.

Friday: 2000 yard swim, 1 hour on the elliptical, weights.

Saturday: 20 minutes easy, 20 minutes moderate, 20 minutes harder, 20 minutes cool down = 9.5 miles (7:15 pace during the tempo part)

Sunday: 12 miles

On Saturday, I also met with my coach/training guru Sarah. She designs my training schedule (she is also another medieval graduate student in my program), and has been doing so for a year. I have had good results under her guidance, not just in marathon training, but she also helped me with some 10k focused workouts in the fall. Anyways, she had pushed for me to do the 8 mile race last week to see where training was at, seeing as cycle 1 ends this weekend. Sarah says sub 1:37 is definitely attainable for the National Half Marathon (3/26), based on last week's time. Then we got to talking about Boston...the big one, the one that all of this crazy cross-training is about. She thinks I should aim for...

sub 3:30

Holy cow. I was thinking low 3:30s, but no, she thinks 3:29:xx is within my grasp. We'll have a better idea after the half, but I could be going for a big PR. So, I am going to take a leap of faith. I will have my first track workout of the season on Tuesday, and the next 8 weeks will be

geared to this new goal. There will need to be some trust and hard work, but it would be amazing to see a 3:2x:xx on the screen on April 18th. This was from last weekend's race:

I don't know how clear it is, but Heather and I are both smiling a lot for really hammering away at the pace. If I can take that approach into Boston, and make that leap, dreams really can come true!