Marathon Nerves & Goals

The Austin Marathon is coming up pretty soon (like 9 days!!!).  I am getting soooooo nervous!  I’ve set a somewhat lofty, but completely attainable, time goal for myself.  I’m on a long term goal journey to qualify for the Boston Marathon.  My goal for this year’s Austin Marathon is 4:30:00 or faster.  That’d be an over a 14 minute PR if I can pull it off.  And I think I can, so long as I’m not having a “bad day.”

My long term goal journey includes running this year’s Austin Marathon in that 4:30:00.  The next step is running this year’s South Padre Island Marathon in 4:10:00 or faster.  South Padre, aside from the causeway at the beginning, is completely flat, so as long as I put in the work and get my workout runs done, that shouldn’t be too hard for me to drop yet another 20 minutes off my marathon time.  Then, the hammer happens (if things go as planned, that is) at next year’s Austin Marathon where I hope to run a 3:42:00.  Now, I do have a back up plan and that is to run that 3:42:00 at next year’s South Padre Island Marathon.  And, honestly, dropping 28 minutes between November 12^th of this year and February 19^th of next year seems like a super tall order.  I’m not saying it’s not doable, but I’m saying that it probably won’t be too fun.  But, I’m going to try my best and we’ll see what happens.  My first goal is to qualify to run Boston in 2018…my back up goal would see me qualify to run it in 2019.

After I’ve qualified and run Boston, I’m going to start doing more destination races, like Run Disney events!  I’d like to do one of those a year.  But I don’t want to do just one race.  I want to do the entire weekend of events!  Like the Princess Weekend where you run a 10K and a half marathon…the Goofy Challenge where you run a half and a full…etc, etc.

Basically, until I run Boston, it’s all business (fun, but business oriented, putting in the work that needs to be done in order to hit my goals) and after Boston, it’s all fun and games!  I’ve already decided that if/when I qualify to run Boston, I will buy myself a GoPro camera to video the ENTIRE marathon as I run it.  I will video the spectators, the other runners, my favorite signs I see as I run along and I will also do commentary at various point throughout the race, checking in with myself and how the race is going for me.  Since I don’t ever PLAN to qualify for Boston more than once, I don’t plan to ever run it more than once, so I want to remember EVERYTHING about it!!!