Running • Page 111

Hell yeah, congrats Garrett! A PR is sweet in any situation, but it's especially awesome when you think you don't have it in the tank and then you run way better than you ever expected. Celebrate this one.

 

Thanks! My chip malfunctioned (yay rain) so they had to manually figure out my time. Literally a photo finish. 1:51:19 is now my official race PR (my Strava said 1:51:18). I ran a training 1:50:10 last fall, but I've heard training PRs don't really count since it's not verifiable by anything other than your tracking app, which I'm okay with.

 

I think I come from a different era of running, but if I ran the time (in a race or not) that would be my PR. It wasn’t all that long ago that electronic tracking was not all that widespread.

 

There are PRs I've run in time trial situations that I count as my PRs, mostly for distances I just don't race very often, like 10-milers. But I think that stuff can count.

 

I think it stems from the fact you can only qualify for the Majors and Olympics on chip time.

 

I’ve been doing some research on getting my time down to a BQ time, and it seems the consensus is that to go sub-2:55 (effectively my BQ time for the next 9 years) it will take me 2-4 years of dedicated training.

Seems like the milestones for measured and safe increases are:

1:40 half (which was the goal I set for this year; current PR: 1:51:19)
3:30 full (current PR: 3:58:35)
1:25 half
3:15 full
1:17 half
2:55 full

It’s daunting, but it doesn’t feel out of reach (yet). I suppose I know what I’ll be doing the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Maybe start looking into races to vacation around in places I’ve not been.

I’ve heard Indy is a great one to try and PR/BQ at.

 

That all seems logical, but you could also go the Revol marathon series route haha. Not sure how those are BQ's, but people are laying some pretty ridiculous PR's down on those courses.

On a serious note, I would push back a little bit on the half times. I would also say that for a lot of people, going from 3:15 to 2:55 for a full may not be realistic. Most people I know get stuck there for a few cycles. Obviously, not everyone. Just a couple of my observations.

 

Yeah, I don’t think it’s a linear ever next race is a PR set up. But just that’s how you can see where you’re “supposed” to be in the process. It took me two years to go from 4:48 to 3:58, but first I took my half from 2:15 to 1:57 to 1:51 in between.

If I get to my 39th birthday and haven’t BQd but I’m close, cool. Out to Snoqualmia haha. I think that’s the big Revol.

I know charity entries are always an option, but given the economy for the next few years, don’t want to take that route.

 

Indy is where my sister ran her PR. 2:46. That was 2019, and she missed the women’s OTQ standard by a minute. So yes, it’s a fast course!

If you’re serious about this goal, the number 1 piece of advice I can give you is to commit to upping your volume. It looks like you’re in the 15-20 mpw territory right now. If you can get that up to 30-40, with one workout and one long run per week in there, just that extra time on feet is going to do so much to drop your times.

 

Yeah, that’s on my to do list. I was in the 35-45 range most of last year for the two fulls. This spring has been lower with my ankles acting up. I’m thinking I probably need to get into that ~50 window to truly make a jump in times.