Oct 7th, 2010 - Track - Chelmsford, MA - 3.1

Day 280 - I was looking back at my run from last year, at Hartford, to see what I could do differently this year to break 3 hours. In short, don't do what I did last year. Here were my splits from last year:

(Crash & Burn)

As you can see, I was all over the place. I had no clue what I was doing, or even what pace I needed!

I remember walking and barely running the last 5K. That sucked. Amazingly, I still managed to ALMOST break my marathon PR set 6 days prior in Portland!

These were my runs leading up to Hartford last year (note the DNF at Wapack due to a severely busted ankle):

  

(The JB School of Stoopid Marathon Training)

My preparation this year, over pretty much the same time period:

(The JB Graduate School of Stoopid Marathon Training)

I just need to average about 6:47 to (un)comfortably break my current PR of 2:58, and about 6:38 to hit 2:55.

My plan this year is to be disciplined enough to follow a strict pace of 6:40's early on, and then try to bring it down to about 6:30 for the middle miles, knowing that it's going to creep back up above 6:50 per mile over the final 6 miles.

I found the following on runningahead.com from a fellow runner who just ran the Wineglass Marathon (about as fast as the new Hartford course) under 2:54:

(Nice & Steady)