Some new running goals

You know how I've been talking about giving running a rest for a while?  It turns out that after putting so much time, energy, and effort into it, I now miss the heck out of it now that I'm no longer training for a big race.  It's the strangest thing, because I was so looking forward to getting to NOT run, and now the only thing holding me back is the ship time on my new shoes (aka saving grace for my legs).

Ad did I mention that I set some new running goals?  Woah Nelly, they are BIG ONES.  Like, I don't know quite what I'm thinking with these bad boys, because apparently, I want to try my hand at running fast.  Who knew?

I told Ammon that he wasn't allowed to let me register for another marathon until I had broken 2 hours in the half marathon.  I told him this right after the marathon, because I have heard that marathon running is a lot like childbirth, and women just have this nasty tendency of repeatedly torturing themselves.  I am recognizing that really building my skills in shorter distances, and working up to the longer distances could be a really beneficial thing for my running, and so I want to apply that across the board, starting with the 5k distance.  Once I hit my 5k goal time, I will take on the 10k, then the half marathon, and eventually the marathon again.  I want to be clear, these are stand-alone running race goals, not triathlon running leg goals.  That would just be crazy talk talking.  But anyway, how I set these goals:  I knew I wanted to be able to run a half marathon in under 2 hours, so I plugged that goal time into a race paces calculator, which gave me my target paces for the 800m all the way through to the marathon.  Neat.  So without further ado, I present to you my new running training targets for the next however long they last.

1 mile: 7:28 (is this real life???  OMG that's freakishly fast)

5k:       25:55

10k:     53:50

Half:    2:00:00

Full:    4:12:33

They feel totally out there and unrealistic right now.  Like I said, a 7:28 mile seems freakishly fast and impossible to me.  However, finishing a full marathon seemed freakish and impossible to me 2 years ago, so there you go.  I can hit these goals.  It's just going to take some time, energy, sweat, and devotion to do it.  I've got all of those things.  There's nothing like giving yourself the goal of dropping 6 minutes and change off of your 5k time to make you feel well and truly dedicated to a sport.

And here we all thought that Kristen the triathlete might have something more interesting to talk about than running...  I guess that's not entirely accurate.

On the bright side, speed work and 5k training is short, so there's at least a minimal chance of me having a life outside of training, school, and work...