Day 7

Today was a 3 mile day. It seems almost like a waste of time to get all dressed for a run and only do these short distances but I have to be patient and trust the plan. I'm going to start posting my stats for my runs because knowing that I'm going to be doing that might make me run a little faster or walk a little less up the hills. I am planning to do all of the 12-14 mile runs and under in the hills and anything 14 and up in the flats. Of course there will be some hills in my flat runs but they won't be as many as in my hilly runs. So what that means is that my pace is going to look super slow, well, for most of my training. But my goal is to do the marathon in 4 hours. I know that it is do-able but if I'm able to do that, it would be a huge improvement over my 2005 New York Marathon time of 4 hours 22 minutes and 26 seconds and my 2007 Nike Women's Marathon time of 4 hours 28 minutes and 17 seconds. That said, I have done a half marathon in 1 hour 59 minutes and 7 seconds so if I can really really train well and keep many of my training miles in the hills, I think that running a flat course over 26.2 miles in 4 hours is not unrealistic.

I was going to go to the headlands for today's 3 mile run but I decided it wasn't worth the 10 mile drive just to do 3 miles so I drove to the entrance of the Terra Linda/Sleep Hollow Open Space and started from there. It's a bit hilly but not too bad. Today's time was 31:38 with an average pace of 10:21 for the 3.05 miles. The photo is from today's run. The only thing I don't love about the open space out here is that it's not very big and you have to run on a road through a residential section to get to another Open Space area. It's not a big deal but I guess that is why I love running in the headlands so much - because you can link together trails and fire-roads and go for many many uninterrupted miles. Overall, I have no complaints. I think that this is probably one of the best places I could live when it comes to weather and terrain for running.