Pete Tanguay

Thought I’d look back at my training for the first 3 months of my 4 months leading up to the Little Rock Marathon.  I’m feeling marathon ready but definitely not peaking.  2 16 mile runs this year and 1 23 mile run.  A couple of very light weeks while I was on the road.  It’s 67  hours and 445 miles of running through last Saturday averaging 30 miles / week.  There are two marathons in there.  I’ve got one more hard week of training this week, hopefully to be capped by a half marathon race this weekend if I can work out the details, and then taper time.  It’s time to start getting ready, start building my race day plan on how I’m going to conserve and set the tone in the early miles, attack the hills and sustain my run in the late miles. 

Interesting watching the interview with Ryan Hall after the New York City marathon.  He speaks of it as a humbling experience, something he’ll get over and focus again on getting ready for the next race.  Says it just wasn’t his day today.  Well, he finished 4th with a 2:10:36 time, less than 3 seconds/mile slower than the winner at 2:09:15 and a minute 45 seconds in front of the 5th place runner.  It’s a good life lesson that everything is relative and it’s good to set tough goals, be humbled by our results when they are not what we were shooting for and work hard to meet our goals.  But at the end of the day, it’s also important to remember that everything is relative and keep a good balance on what we do and appreciate what we have and the results we achieve.

So glad to see the Fedex guy deliver my repaired watch – actually replaced it with a refurbished one.  So glad to have it back for my last long run of my training.  Spin class tomorrow since it is raining.  No watch just long enough to appreciate it and learn a few things. 

Looks like I’m going to sign up for the Donner Lake Triathlon up near Lake Tahoe a week from Sunday.  Have a friend from the RAAM crew that is donig it so it is an opportunity I just can’t pass up.  I swam a 1/2 mile this morning just to see how I would feel and I think I can do the swim ok (that was my biggest concern).  Goal will be to finish (hopefully not last) and to enjoy the scenery and event.