Salt Lake City Marathon -- A New PR!

Wow! This marathon totally took me by surprise. Endurance rather than speed was my plan for 2010 since I wasn't able to meet one of my goals last year of not having to walk in a marathon. Since I have 5 marathons planned for this year, my strategy was to take it easy on this marathon and use it to see how my winter training went and push a little harder on the next one. When I saw the time clock after finishing mile 21 and it read 2:52:00 I was shocked and thought no way is this girl going to walk. I'm going to go for it. My strategy changed a little. First of all, I decided that no matter what I was not going to walk. Second, if I kept a pretty good pace I could beat my best time. I knew I still had the climb of mile 24-25 coming up, but mind over matter I made it. When I saw the time clock at the finish, I gave it my best sprint and finished the marathon in 3:35:26. I shaved 18 minutes off my best marathon time and even qualified for Boston. My legs are sorer than usual and I did get a blister on my foot, from a bunched up sock that I didn't want to take the time to stop and fix.

About the training -- After reading several articles about improving my strength and speed, I knew I had to step up my training plan. Most of it was trial by error until I found what worked for me. First of all, I read that to improve, I needed to find a plan that had fartleks, hill, intervals, long runs etc. But after a few weeks of this I was not enjoying running and started to look for something else. That is when I started reading about Yasso's 800. There is a lot of discussion on the internet over if it really works or not so I decided to give it a try. I followed a Hal Higdon training plan, but replaced one day a week with Yasso's and alternated between hills every other week. So one week I would do yasso's and the next week I did hills. I cut out all other fancy stuff besides putting in the mileage. I also decided on strength training and lifted weights three days a week, but this didn't go so well either and dropped this and tried pilates instead. I'll be honest and say that because of illness, most of my hill weeks were cut to make sure I could put in at least 10 Yassos before the marathon. I'll give Bart Yasso the credit and say that I think Yasso's are a pretty good predictor of marathon time despite the controversy.

About the marathon-- Okay! I was totally impressed. Out of all the marathons I have ran, not one included the Star Spangled Banner before the gun went off. It was well organized (which means a lot) and it was a beautiful course. The community support was awesome.

I really want to tell my hubby thanks for all his support. He walked 10 miles today trying to catch me at different locations. I think his workout was harder than mine.