I finally realized that I needed help in order to reach my marathon goals of qualifying for Boston and running under 3 hours.
I’d never learned how to properly do speedwork, I had done some on my own, but nothing specific to the types of races I wanted to accel at. I ran occasionally in college, but never consistently and always on my own. After all, I never ran track or cross country in high school. After the rough race in Chicago I admitted to myself that I really didn’t know as much about running as I thought. After having a great time and a great race, I began wondering if I shouldn’t start training with Ron and the team. My good friend Brett had started training with Ron and asked if I wanted to be a part of the relay team.
Last August I had my first experience with the Mile to Marathon team and coach Ron at Ragnar Great River. I would commit months of time and energy to train, only to be disappointed and wondering why I wanted to do this in the first place. I was finding some success in shorter distances, but the marathon had become a source of fear and frustration. I finished in 3:38:00, missing a PR by 3 minutes. I was on track to run 3:20:00 in Chicago the previous October, but asthma issues and hot weather brought my pace to a screeching halt around the 20 mile mark. I had not achieved a personal best in this distance for 3 years. It was cloudy with some fog and to my surprise, no rain! After a brief pause acknowledge the better-than-expected conditions, I became intensely focused on my race. Race morning came, I got on the shuttle, and when I arrived at the starting area there was a cool breeze coming off Lake Superior. The race was forecast to be a washout, which was frustrating considering I was scheduled to run the Med-City marathon three weeks earlier until extreme heat forced race officials to shorten the distance to a half-marathon. Having run it several times before, I was comfortable with the course and knew the extremes of weather that can be experienced on the north shore this time of year. On Saturday, June 16, I ran Grandma’s Marathon for the fifth time.
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