Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Looking Back

I took on an interesting exercise this morning.

I went through athlinks.com and found all my previous race results. I took all these race results and organized them into an Excel spreadsheet, so I would have them easily available to compare.

Of course, I'm completely aware that only a complete dork would do this.

Between maiden and married names and legal and nicknames, my results are all over the place.

In doing this, I learned some very important things.

1.) I joke around about how slow I am. Until 2006, I was FAST. Speedy damn fast. It was in 2006, that I broke my heel. I wasn't able to run for a very very long time. Since then, I've done so many long distance events that I've completely forgotten that I.AM.FAST.

I just have to get back into that mindset that I'm not a plodder.

I'm still shocked by the fact that I let this "slow" mindset take control of me for so long. Forget the recovery time and then building up endurance again. I'm past all that. I can run hard again.

I'm going to run hard again.

2.) I haven't had a half marathon PR since 2003.

I know I've told you differently.

But I really believed it.

I thought in May of this year, I had a half marathon PR. But I didn't. It wasn't even close. It was the fastest time that I've posted since my accident, but it was not even close to a PR.

*******
What would you do with this information?

Here's what I'm going to do....I don't know when I'm going to go for these goals. I haven't gotten that far.

I'm going to start exacting some revenge. Not alot, but some friendly competition.

My plan for my Oct Half marathon was to PR. Now, given that I know what my "true" PR is, I don't know if I can accomplish that. BUT, the stakes have been raised. I will beat my May time (granted it's a different course).....and I'm going for an overall PR next May.

I also want to head back to San Diego to beat my best ever marathon time. Flat and running at sea level.....it's pretty great coming from CO. The last time I ran there, I pr'd but I didn't fuel properly. Imagine what I'll do now.

I used to run a race called Running of the Green Lucky 7k. It's in our snowiest month, and the race is always cold. My fastest time in this race was 35:12. I'm going to start training to beat that time.

Next, remember that "fun" Turkey Trot. Yea, well prior to 2006, I was posting some smokin' fast times. This year, I'm going all out for that 4 mile race. None of that, "will I break 40 min?" crap anymore....nope.....



GAME ON PEOPLE.