I had a great run on Saturday. It was the group run with the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon training gang. We ran 12 miles on the Oklahoma City river trails. I'm not a big fan of these trails but yesterday I really enjoyed them.
I hooked up with a great friend who pushed me through every inch of those 12 miles. He kept speeding up and I kept hanging on. I started worrying about the pace around mile 2 and it got worse as we continued. By mile 7, though, I got that crazy-Willie-screw-it feeling and stopped worrying and just went with it. Don't know why I always equate running with bull riding in those situations but I do and my standard saying/thought is "if you're gonna ride, ride it till she bucks you". So that's what I did. Luckily I didn't get bucked and I made the 12 miles in 1:31 minutes. I was beat-up and beat-down and dead tired the rest of the day but it felt great and I'm so pleased that I was able to do it.
Now here's the depressing thought I had later that night. We averaged around 7:30 per mile on the run and it was extremely hard for me to do that. My Boston qualifying time is 3:15 which is 7:28 per mile. So if I could run that extremely hard pace I ran yesterday for another 14.2 miles I still would NOT qualify for Boston. Ha! A nice reality check for Willie. Oh well, I like running well and I'm still blessed that I can do it so screw Boston.
Thanks for listening
1 comment:
For the record, I think people put way too much emphasis on qualifying for Boston, so don't worry about it! And running trails, I think, is always harder than regular road running. Awesome job, Willie - 12 miles in an hour and a half? Wow!!
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