Blah...

Well, St. Jude's was not the big comeback I was hoping for. I went out just a little under 7:30 pace and held on to that through mile 9. After that, it was a death march to the finish line. There was a head wind those last 4 miles and it got pretty tough out there. I ended up finishing in 1:41:07 which was 7:44 pace. The depressing part is that this was my marathon pace for Chicago in 2008. The good news is, I ran 9 very hard miles at sub 7:30 pace and then ran slower, but with the same (if not more) intensity so I got a really good workout. Even better, I seemed to have recovered quickly. The first run I did was a couple days after the race. It was 6 miles at 8:30ish pace and I think it really knocked all the nastiness out of my quads which were really, really sore. Since then, I've done 3 more 6 milers (2 of them at sub 8 pace) and a 10 miler at 8:06 pace. Apparently, this horrible race brought me to a whole new level!

Next week, I start an 8 week plan that will get me through the first two Grand Prix races of the season which are the Hour Track Run and the River Trail 15K. The Monday after the 15K I start my official Lincoln Marathon 12 week plan. Even though Memphis did not go well, I really do think good things are happening and I'm not sure that I didn't just have a bad day that was made worse by bad weather conditions. I was pretty sad about the whole thing but have decided to make the best of it.