If you don’t follow politics at all, you may not know who Tim Pawlenty is. He is a former governor of the state of Minnesota who decided to run for President. He was part of the large field of Republican candidates who were vying for their party’s nomination. Last summer, after finishing a distant 3rd in the meaningless Iowa Straw Poll, Pawlenty unexpectedly dropped out. Who did come in behind? Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul. He finished ahead of everybody else, yet, because he didn’t finish as strongly as he would have liked in a straw poll, he quit.
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New Word Definition:
Pawlenty – verb, pawlentied
Earlier this week I started marathon training for the upcoming Sugarloaf Marathon. 18 weeks from this past Sunday I hope to cross the finish line in Kingfield, ME in under 3:15:00. I need to run a sub-3:15 in order to qualify for Boston once again. That’s over 4 minutes faster than I have ever run a marathon. For my very first run, my program (the Pfitz 18/55 plan) called for a Lactate Threshold Run – 8 miles, with 4 of those miles coming in at or around half-marathon pace.
Half-Marathon pace for me should (read: used to) be around 7:05 per mile. Try as I might, on that first run I couldn’t maintain a pace faster than 7:30 per mile for the required 4 miles. Mentally is was a blow. 7:30 per mile is 4 seconds slower per mile than the pace I would need to run 26.2 miles in order to achieve my goal.
And I could barely maintain that pace for 4 miles?
My first thought was I need to re-evaluate; maybe I’ve passed my peak in running; maybe it’s time simply to log the miles, run the races, but ignore the times; maybe I should quit my quest to return to Boston.
But then I thought of Tim Pawlenty. He has GOT to be kicking himself right now. After the carousel of conservative Republicans who have taken turns being the “Anybody But Romney” candidate, Pawlenty has to be wondering “what if?”.
Pulling out prematurely is never a good thing…
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And so, despite the disappointing finish in that first training run, I am pressing on, because, dammit, I am no Tim Pawlenty!
Run Luau Run 
There is nothing about you that says quitter. Not. A. Damn. Thing.
This from a man who ran an extra 6.4 miles in the NYC Marathon? You don’t know how to quit!
If everyone hit their goal paces on DAY 1 of marathon training, approximately 9273498273498237492 people would qualify for Boston every year. Trust me; I did the math. I’m glad to hear you moved on; 18 weeks is plenty of time, and you are no quitter. Have a kick-ass training season!
The Pfitz programs assume you’ve been running a base of 30+ miles before starting and that your goal times are based on recent results, not targets. I would spend the next 6 weeks building back your mileage base (mostly easy runs) up to 30 miles and then doing the 12/55 program. Jumping straight into 18/55 with zero base is asking for an injury. Ps I looked at your training log from last spring and it looks like you did many of your runs too fast. If you’re going to follow the Pfitz mileage, then you have to follow the paces too or you end up with bad races, injuries or burnout. Good luck!
Sound advice as always my friend!
btw, I was also thinking, you shouldn’t be listening to me, you should be listening to that guy Greg who posts comments on here sometimes (if you haven’t already). I’ve been perusing his blog (predawnrunner) and he really has a lot of great information about training. His race report for Towpath (which he won) is also a great study in good race execution. I would definitely seek him out for advice.
I was thinking myself the other night… Why dont they have a hat with wireless headphones and an iPod/ Mp3 holder… Sounds like a great invention!!!!!!!!!!
Cheers