David's Blog

Mediocre Marathon 'Training'

I’ve been somewhat preparing for the [Bayshore marathon](http://www.bayshoremarathon.org/) through the winter and into the spring. Realistically, my workouts have been more suited for 5k to half-marathon training but since I was coming off of injury, I think any workouts were better than no workouts.

As a result, I’ve had to scale back my goal expectations. Various calculators like the Daniels VDot and McMillan estimate I should be able to run under 2:50 even off of some of my more average 5k and 10k times, and something like 2:55 based off of last year’s Bayshore half time. I know I haven’t done equivalent marathon training to last year’s 5k and half marathon training so I’m hoping that I can run sub-3:05 to qualify for Boston, and would like to run 2:59 or so. I tell myself that if I qualify for Boston, that will be my first marathon on a ’real’ training cycle.

I’m still not sure sub-3 is realistic. My long runs haven’t been long enough or frequent enough and I haven’t done enough marathon pace work or tempo runs. My [longest run was 16 miles](https://openrunlog.org/u/david/run/536e7410d1ec593175b27d27) this past weekend. Tomorrow, I’ll do my last tempo run of 5-6 miles, probably around half marathon pace or just under it. After that there is nothing left to do. We’ll just have to find out what happens.

I could take the easy route out and just run this thing for fun but I’ve already done that for too many races this year. My fitness and weekly mileage may not be where I think they should be but that isn’t an excuse to shy away from running what I’m capable of for where I’m at now.

I’m going to shoot for a sub 3 hour time anyway, it could be a hilariously bad experience or it could go really well. If I don’t try, I’ll never know.