Something I’d add is that I have often heard of people who lose track of where they are (sometimes intentionally) and essentially “trick” themselves into running faster than planned…hmmm.

Thanks for the comment – more to ponder.

However, there is one thing that I can say with confidence. We will rarely, if ever, exceed our personal goals and expectations for ourselves. How many people qualify for Boston by a minute or less? Think about that. 3+ hours, over 26 miles, and there’s this huge cluster of people hitting their goal within a minute. What if their goal had been 15 minutes faster? My guess …. they’d have hit it within a minute. Most of them, at any rate.

If I hadn’t joined AustinFIT and had still done distance running, I would probably be up at 8-9 miles by now and feeling pretty good about myself. After all, 9 months ago I couldn’t run a 5K. If I hadn’t started hanging out with some really fast people, some of whom had been really slow people, I would be very happy to have hit a 27:00 5K this season instead of pushing that down to sub 25:00. We can all do so much more than our “comfort zone” tells us is safe. All we have to do is try, and not give up when it doesn’t come easily.

I found myself nodding quite a bit reading you comments. We are – REALLY- “weekend warriors” – aren’t we? We have lives outside running that we have to pay attention to don’t we? Thanks for your validating comments Sean!

Jon,

A few things: 1) You WILL be able to finish. 2) Your comments about core strength are helping me muster the strength to give up one run a week and get into the gym and 3) I agree with your comments on race conditions. My PR was run under perfect conditions but two of the marathons I’ve run and MANY training runs have been in HORRID conditions! That’s why I called the PR race a perfect race because they RARELY happen! Thanks Jon!

As far as perfect race conditions, I wonder how many of your races are really perfect anyway? Maybe you need to train in awful conditions to be prepared for those. I know Tiger Woods would practice in high winds when he had to compete in England where wind speeds were high. Maybe like a good “mudder” at the race track, you need some time in bad weather too.

I often think about the what-ifs of running. What if I trained more, trained harder, lifted more, or raced more? These what-ifs are fine. In fact, doing something about them can help us improve as runners. That said, I think about them too much. Inevitably reality sets in. For me it’s my job, my wife, my old house, and my dog. I simply do not have the kind of time I had in high school and college to focus all my free attention on running. So I have to make compromises–missing weekly goals occasionally, cutting down (or out) on gym time, and so forth. I sometimes wish that I could make running the only thing I do with my true free time, but I can’t. I also need reading and playing music to round out my life. So much of life is prioritizing and compromising. Running is just one thing I have to balance into that equation. Now, if I could quit my job, then I’d start dreaming about the Olympics. Alas, I am stuck taking it one step at a time, figuring out where and when that next step will be and completely looking forward to all of it!