Marathon Madness

Watched the Olympic Marathon on TV last night and it was perhaps the greatest distance running performance I have witnessed. In mid 80 degree temperature with high humidity, Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya destroyed the Olympic marathon record by almost three minutes with an insane time of 2:06:32. Unlike the women's race last week, which started at an extremely conservative pace, Wanjiru ignored the oppressive heat and took it out hard from the gun and gradually dropped the field like a hitman on a mission. Only 21 years old, I think Wanjiru is a sure bet to take down the marathon world record if he can find a fast, flat race in cooler conditions.

While my running performances are hardly Wanjiru-like, I feel like I'm snapping out of a rut I was in and feel ready to start racing and hopefully PRing again. Saturday, August 30th will be my first race in 6 weeks at my favorite distance, 5 miles. After taking a month off of speed work, I just started on the 12 week Pfitzinger 8K/10K plan with the aim of running a nice 10K PR at the Ann Arbor Turkey Trot on November 9th. My week 1 interval workout, which I ran last Tuesday, was 6 x 800 at current 5K 'effort' and I averaged 2:41 with 2:00 jog breaks for recovery. My times were: 2:44, 2:40, 2:42, 2:40, 2:40, 2:41. They all felt easy and controlled -- a nice rustbuster. Wore my new racing flats, The Nike Kantana Racer 3, for the 800s and they feel nice and light. Started Week 2 of the program today with a solid 11 miler at 6:57 pace, hitting 7:10 pace going out and getting down into the 6:30s at the end.