With the Denver Marathon less than three weeks away, let’s take a look at my training in September 2007 versus 2008.

September 2007 - 180.50 Miles
September 2008 - 288.88 Miles

Man, what was I doing last year? I obviously wasn’t training that much. This month was my highest month ever, good sign and hopefully the miles pay off on October 19, 2008. Last year I had a lot of fast long runs that didn’t materialize this year. At first it baffled me a bit and even concerned me, but this September, I ran every day, except one. When I did my long runs, my legs were not that fresh and I am guessing that last year, when I did my long runs my legs were fresh from the low mileage and the days off, thus I was able to hammer them a bit harder.

In September of 2007, I did two races. I ran the Farmers 5000 in 18:23, on a warm day. I also ran the Quad Cities Half Marathon in 1:21:59.

September of 2008, I ran seven races, of those, I probably took three of them seriously. I ran a 17:48 at the SkirtChaser 5k, which was a post college PR. I also completed the Boulder Half Marathon in 1:23:23.

I’m not sure how accurate those running calculators are, but my half marathon time would convert to a low 1:20’s at under 1k foot elevation and the Quad Cities Half Marathon started at 500 feet and was a much easier course than Boulder Half Marathon. I’m pretty confident that I would have knocked at least a minute off my time that I ran in the Quad Cities had I done that race this year. I also tapered for that race last year and did not taper for the Boulder Half Marathon.

That’s really my only race that I have done at a lower elevation, so I haven’t gotten an accurate idea has to how it effects my performance. I did run Grandma’s Marathon in 2007 and totally bombed due to the heat and humidity, so I will toss that outlier.

In conclusion, I’m ready, gonna kill the Denver Marathon! My true goal is to go under 2:55, but 2:55 is the safe goal that I would be happy with.

I’m already starting to think of a marathon to run for 2009. I’m only going to run one marathon, most likely a fall marathon. A few of the guys that I trained with in the spring (I was training for Lincoln Marathon but bailed due to my hip flexor injury, they were training for Boston) are talking about the Columbus Marathon, from what I hear it’s a fast course and some good runners show up for a small marathon (4k in the marathon).

Another part of me wants to run a major marathon and the one that probably interest me the most is New York. To get the automatic qualifying time, I need to run a 2:55, so there you go, another incentive. I’ll probably consider Twin Cities again (I bailed last year due to the heat/humidity) or Chicago Marathon. I have a lot of friends in both of those cities, making logistics a bit easier.

I tell you though, the midwest heat and humidity scare me. I grew up there and coming from a dry climate to a humid climate is really hard, I struggle with it when I return back to Iowa to visit my folks, I would rather run a marathon at altitude than deal with a humid day. Thus, that is the issue with Twin Cities and Chicago, especially when those races occur in the early part of October, ala Chicago and Twin Cities last year, which were on the same day.