Time Matters

For those who have been following my blog, many have noticed how often I comment on how slow my running is or how little progress I have made regarding speed. In fact, many supportive friends have even told me that I shouldn't be worried about speed, but only focused on finishing.

Here's what I know for sure: short of breaking a leg or being hit by a bus, I can and will finish the marathon. That part, I have great confidence in because I have lots of supporters counting on me and a ton of personal motivation to make it across the finish line.

Something else I know for sure is that time matters, and here's why: After signing up, I learned that to run the Paris Marathon, you need to be able to finish in 5 hours and 40 minutes, at which point the course is closed. To finish the marathon in this amount of time, I need to run/walk 12.5 min miles consistently for the entire race. Right now (at 3 miles) I run ~14 minute miles. This will not be enough to get me to Paris.

Over the next several months, we will have 2 "event evaluations" to ensure that we are on-track to complete our chosen event. If my speed does not improve by the 2nd evaluation, I will by transferred from the Paris team to the Country Music Marathon team heading to Nashville in late April. Either way I will be running and completing a marathon, but Nashville seems like a far cry from Paris. In the event I were to wind up in Nashville, the good news is that runners have 8 hrs (instead of 5:40) to complete the race. The tradeoff is that Nashville is full of hills.

Perhaps this makes my obsession with speed a bit more clear. As excited as I am to run a marathon, I am growing increasingly aware that a 5:40 finish for me is on the ultra-aggressive side. At least for the present time, all I can do is continue to focus on my speed and forget all about the hills of Nashville.

Until next time,
Lisa