Next weekend, 8 days away, is my target race for this season and what I've been focusing my summer training on. A fast, flat half marathon along the river in Philly, hopefully with great weather like it is right now in the area. I've had some great training this summer, and I believe that I'm in my shape ever judging by workouts and races. I've run 3 lower-key tune up/checkpoint 5k races during my build up to Philly:
8/10 Belmar Chase 14:46 5th
9/2 Quarterback Club 14:25 2nd
9/6 Teri's Run 14:19 1st
With each race, I've gotten faster and more importantly competed better. Prior to this week, I had the fitness I needed to run well over 13.1 miles, and after these races I'm extra confident in that along with my ability to race when it counts. In other words, I've got the physical and mental puzzle pieces in place, and now all that's left is to consolidate fitness over the next week and get a good taper in for the Big Race.
One point that I feel the need to address is that I don't think racing twice two weeks before a big goal race is the ideal way to prepare, I didn't think it would compromise my preparation much at all. The races both had prize money and I ended up winning $450 combined, so it was a good way to get in a good pair of hard speed endurance workouts in the context of a half marathon. I like racing and I like winning, and I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket especially when I don't think it would hurt to race a little bit beforehand.
Another interesting note about the above 5ks is that two were run in summer heat and humidity and one was run in very dry and cool conditions. Most importantly the 14:25 and 14:20 were run in very different weather conditions, which tells me that I am well acclimated and will be able to run well in Philly regardless of the weather. As usual, a cool dry day would be much preferred over a typical late summer haze, but at least it wouldn't be a total wash like if I was not well heat-trained.
As for real time goals for Philly, I can honestly say that I don't know except that I am in measurably better shape than I was when I ran 1:07:32. I have been running much faster on long tempo runs and a few seconds faster for race-pace intervals. I hope that the fitness gains translate into a substantially faster time. I always say never be upset at a PR, and I wouldn't be upset if I ran 1 second faster, but I will say that 1:06:30 is the slowest I can say I will be happy with, based on current fitness and how my training compares with years past.
