I'm back. To running and blogging again. I took almost two years off of running for any races (AFCEA 5K - 5/8/2014 - time: 22:26) and I haven't run a marathon since the Marine Corps Marathon 2013. Well I have registered for and received a lottery entry for the MCM 2016 race and I don't plan on wasting it. Yesterday I scraped together a 30 week training plan that will be mostly based on Hal Higdon's Personal Best Training Plan. I am 40+ now and haven't been training to run hard for quite some time. I will need to assess my fitness over a longer period of time. I hope for an improvement on my last marathon's personal best time of 3:33:5, but my 'A goal' is to run that elusive Boston Qualifier of 3:15:00. Definitely a stretch but I am aiming for it.
So... today's run was scheduled for an easy pace workout. Three miles at a little bit over 9 min/mi pace. I hit my marks: 3 miles exactly in 26:59, I wore my heart rate monitor and foot pod so I had my HR (avg 155 bpm) and Cadence (89 spm) data. I set out at around 5:30 AM with no breakfast or snack just about 8 oz of water and had to spend a good 15 minutes acquiring a satellite signal for my Garmin. Good run. I intentionally worked on my running form to have a fairly high cadence and upright, balanced running form. I noticed that I had a tendency to land heavy on my left leg and flare my right knee. When I ran lighter (read: more rapid cadence with a more elongated spine) this straighten out, but I did feel a bit of weirdness in my right hip. Probably nothing, but I'll watch it. I didn't stretch after the run - I forgot to do it. I'll stretch after weight lifting tonight.
Interesting story of this morning. While pacing to get a Garmin signal and looking up at the sky a lady jogger passed by me removed her headphone and said Good Morning. I greeted her back but honestly I felt awkward because I didn't want to scare her or make her uncomfortable. See encountering an unfamiliar 6'4" black man in dark clothing (with a hoodie) in the pre-morning light while running alone as a petite white lady must be scary if you are worried about such things. I assume she wasn't because she just kept running and minding her business, but I thought it was wise of her to remove her headphones until she had gotten well away from me. Obviously I have no ill intentions, but the optics on the scenario wasn't good. I had not yet started running and was pacing in the neck of my cul-de-sac wearing a dark blue cotton sweatsuit which doesn't say runner at all. I didn't want to make her nervous so I walked to the street-lighted area across the street rather than walk down the street as I intended because it would've meant following her down her running path that was a kind of dead end. I would've thought that was creepy. No worries though, she probably didn't think more than a second about it I probably overthinking how I was perceived. If she's a regular runner we'll see each other regularly on the streets of the neighborhood.
