As coach of one of the most successful NFL teams in the last decade, Bill Belichick is known for dealing 'humble pie' after every game. Even during New England's undefeated season all his players would note how there was always room for improvement.Running's version of humble pie is a race. If you want to know where you stand in your training, sign up and give it what you have. I'm over simplifying but shorter races are great measuring sticks for your progress. If your a male and your goal is to qualify for Boston, you have to run a 3:10 marathon. If you sign up for a 10 miler during your training and you struggle to finish at 8 minute miles, there's some work that needs to be done between now and the race. Racing is like all natural butter; there is no substitute for the real thing. Most training plans/schedules include and show when build up races should be run; these are important to include in the training. I would encourage to try and have these be real races, and not just you running that distance as if it were a race. Obviously timing plays a role in that, there may not be a race of the specific distance you need when you need it, but don't be afraid to vary the weekend training schedule to squeeze the real race setting in.
I haven't been taking my training serious enough and it wasn't until yesterday I realized how far behind I am. I set aggressive goals for myself and I think my first goal needs to be adjusted because I didn't put the work in up front. Now I'm left with 8 weeks and couldn't feel farther from a 3:10 marathon. I knew up front that it was a big under taking, but currently I'm not on pace because of lack of effort and lots of excuses. Last year while training for my first marathon I didn't care; I didn't know what I didn't know so there was nothing to slow me down. Now that I've gone the distance and been there and am confident I can do it again I've been less motivated to go out and reach new highs in miles run. I'm adjusting my goal not to accommodate a lazy schedule, but to remain realistic. Here's a strategy for building a training schedule and race plan:
1. Pick your race and distance
2. Set your goal finish time (if this is your first race at that distance, finishing is the goal)
3. Find a training schedule that you feel will help you achieve your goal finish time at the race
4. Take the shorter races that fall in the schedule seriously and learn from them
5. Adjust 1. or 2. based on what you learn from 4.
6. Always be realistic, finishing distance races is a huge accomplishment in and of itself, having an unattainable goal will only take away from the success of finishing.
7. Find a way to make it fun. Training isn't fun, running long distances is not fun; the fun and reward is finishing, it's making it farther than you thought you could go, so you have to find a way to make that hard work fun. I blog, what do you do?
