I took the week easy, figured my body was still recovering from the marathon.

10/27 - 7.1 Miles
10/28 - Off
10/29 - 7.1 Miles
10/30 - 7.1 Miles
10/31 - 4 Miles
11/01 - 18 Miles on The High Line Canal Trail
11/02 - 6.8 Miles

50 Miles Total

I still have yet to figure out my training plan for CIM, I think that I will keep my miles around 50 and I’d like to get in two 20 milers. Other than that, I’ll be playing it by ear. I’d like to run well, but on the other hand, I’m not taking it that seriously.

I started thinking about my years of running, I don’t think I have ever had a PR in a race that I focused on 100%. A lot of times, I question the taper and how effective it is for me. This year I ran my post college 5k PR after running a race that same morning, I have no idea what that means, but I don’t think that is common for runners. However, even going back to High School and College, I generally ran my fastest times at races that I wasn’t focusing on.

Thus, that is sort of the approach that I am taking with CIM. No pressure, I already got the Denver Marathon under my belt, if I can bust out a fast time at CIM that will be great, if not, I’m not going to kvetch.

On my 18 miler at High Line Canal on Saturday, I run by this old guy. He hollers at me:

OG “What are you training for?”
RunColo “California International Marathon?”
OG “In Sacramento?”
RunColo “Yep”
OG “Good luck qualifying for Boston”
RunColo “Thanks!”

I thought about it for a second and came to the realization that qualifying for Boston is something that I have never even thought about. If you go to any message board, everyone is wanting a Boston Qualifying Time, aka “BQ.” I’ll run Boston someday and I guess I never thought about it being something that was hard for me to obtain, even though my first marathon was a 3:28. I think for a lot of runners, they like to be able to say “I ran Boston” because that is a signal to other runners that you are a faster than average runner. I get asked quite a bit if I have qualified for Boston, I say yes, then I am asked if I am going to run it, I respond no, generally the person can’t believe that I would not run it.

However, if I go <2:55 at CIM, I will have to give strong considerartion to running NYC Marathon next year, since that is the qualifying time you need for an automatic entry. To get the half marathon qualifying time you need to run <1:23, I did that last year (but in Iowa) and was close this year at Boulder Half Marathon. I’m pretty confident that I can run that fast about any time, but I need to go to a lower altitude, but both the half and marathon times are pushing my limits at altitude.