First Blog Entry for 2009

I'm glad to see a new year begin. The old year ended not so good, with worries about whether my knee was going to ever start feeling normal again. My first run of the new year was in Ozawkie, KS, a hilly 6 miles at a fairly relaxed pace, but because I still had a cold and maybe because I wasn't used to the hills, I was pretty tired at the end of the run. January 2 I was going to do 10 miles, but stopped at 4. The run the day before had left me sore and tired. My left knee was also a little sore during both of those runs, so it was probably best that I cut that run short.

This week I had a good series of runs. Monday I did an easy 4 mile run. Knee was feeling a little better, but not quite right. Tuesday I did 5.4 relatively hilly miles (through Maple Ridge and Woodward Park) at my eventual goal marathon pace (about 8:14 per mile) and I felt great! It was the first time since Thanksgiving that I wasn't thinking about my knee hurting during the run. Wednesday I did a 4 mile tempo run, and felt good the whole way. Thursday I ran twice, first 4 easy miles at lunch, and then 6 miles with the RunnersWorld group; the first 3 miles were done at a relatively slow pace, and I did those with Jean, Tom, and Wade. I had never run with any of them before and had a great time! At 2.5 miles Jean and Tom turned back and Wade and I kept going. The last 3 miles we kept increasing our pace until we were going somewhat faster than 8:00 per mile. At one point I ran about a quarter of a mile almost all out. It was a good solid run that left me pleasantly tired. Best of all - no knee pain!

If things go well in my training this year, I would like to run a spring marathon (OKC) at about an 8:30 per mile pace, and a fall or winter marathon at an 8:14 pace. Here are my planned training paces as I start out this new year:
Easy and Long runs: 8:45 to 10:00 per mile
Marathon pace runs: 8:10 to 8:30 per mile
Tempo/steady state runs: 7:30 to 8:05 per mile
Mile repeats: 7:00 to 7:30 per mile