Monday, May 25, 2009

Soldier Field 10-miler - Looking ahead

For the second year in a row, I ran the Soldier Field 10-mile race along Chicago's lakefront path. Since Boston, I have been trying to recover and ramp up for the San Francisco Marathon.

After last week's 17-miler, I felt an usual level of fatigue. I will confess that trying to get focused for my 3rd marathon in a 5-month span has been challenging.

For this race, I decide to take a full two days off in advance. This race would really tell me if I have maintained my fitness level since Boston 5 weeks ago. I've not done really any speed/tempo work - with exception of a 4-mile tempo run a few weeks back. I really did not know what to expect. I was hoping to break 1:05.

I had really good race. I was able to hold 6:25's for the race. I will say that one of the miles on the course felt a bit short to me. You can see which one if you look at my race splits. Nevertheless, it was a successful race - and a monster PR for this distance by about 3+ minutes. I ran a 1:04 flat, which lines up with sub-3 marathon conditioning.

This race is becoming very popular. They capped it at 9,000 runners this year - and it sold out. I wanted to finish in the top 100. I came up slightly short finishing in 104th place.

I've got 9 weeks until San Fran. I don't think I will race until then. Here are some pics of my beautiful family, who came out to support me.

2 comments:

jen said...

Hey! I'm a little late here but I've been meaning to tell you congrats on the PR! Great pics too. Sounds like your training is coming along nicely. Keep up the good work!

chicagor said...

Have you considered just making SF a training run for Chicago? You could run 16 miles at easy pace and 10 at marathon pace for the race with very little rest on either side of the marathon. That way you could focus on speedwork and base building to hit your 2:55 goal in the fall!