Time Goals

The first time I talked about the possibility of running a marathon, it was with the New York race in mind. November 2009. How hard could it be? Both Oprah and Katie Holmes have done it...

To enter NY you have to record a qualifying time (which I learned, for women, was 3h 23min) in a race in the 12 months prior, enter a lottery for a place, or you could pay extra $$$ and go with an international travel agency.

3 hours 23 mins - is that all??

For someone who had never run further than 21k, that seemed reasonable, I mean the Olympians do it in about 2h20 and they are often in their late 30's with children so it could be a reasonable goal?

To my colleagues amusement I started with this lofty goal. Who knows, I thought, I could be a natural runner and had just never known?? Hey, always the dreamer, why not even an Olympian one day?

Well, as it turns out, I'm not a natural runner. More of the shuffling along type, especially up hills!

So as I trained for my qualifying race (Canberra in April 09) my goals were adjusted along the way: 3h45.... 4hours.... To run the whole way.... To finish.

I finished. 4hours 42 mins 23 seconds. Including a 6 min toilet stop, according to my garmin, so really I like to think of it as 4hours 35 ;)

So now training for Paris, initially I thought a reasonable goal would be to finish <4 hours. My average pace has improved, but I'm just not getting the weekly km's needed under my feet. Some people have said that Paris should be just about the 'experience'. But I have been to Paris many times before, and know most of the route well.

At this stage of training - I'd be disappointed if I didn't beat my Canberra time.