The Fifth Third RiverBank Run 25k here in Grand Rapids is on May 14th, 2011, and I plan to win it. Well, at least I plan to "win" it. I was talking to a friend on the phone one day after a half marathon. He asked me what I had been doing that morning, and the conversation went something like this:
Pete: Hey. What are you up to?
Me: I just finished XYZ Half Marathon.
Pete (unimpressed): Cool. Did you win?
Me: Not exactly.
Pete (disappointed): Oh. Well, let me know when you win one.
And on the conversation went.
Now, as the great blues man Howlin' Wolf once sang, "I was built for comfort, baby. I ain't built for speed." I'm not ever going to win a race in my life. I'll always be just a number in the middle of a pack. But if I can train for a race properly and finish a race properly, then I will have acheived my goal. And when you achieve a goal, doesn't it feel like you've won something? When I crossed the finish line in Chicago in 2009 in 4:29:45, I felt like I had just won the whole dang thing. That's why I'm doing it again, and that's why I'm blogging about it. I want to win it again, and I want to share it with my friends and family in a way I didn't understand 2 years ago.
So the RiverBank Run is GR's biggest race of the year, and I'd like to finish in a time that is close to last year's time of 2:19:21 (or so). That would be a "win." In order to train for races, I usually use Hal Higdon's training plans (another post), which say that you need 12 weeks to properly train for a half marathon. As of tomorrow, I'll have 11 weeks left for the race, and the 25k is a bit longer than a half marathon (15.5miles) anyway, so I probably should have tacked on an extra week.
Long/short- I'm behind on the plan. I'm not necessarily behind on my running, but I'm behind on my training. Big difference, which I'll save for yet another post. Either way:
If I hurry up...I'll be late.
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