This week included another sprint time trial with a 350 meter time trial to see where I stand compared to week 3. I've made improvements in my swimming form by decreasing the amount of drag with a torpedo swimming style, keeping me long in the water. Doing so shaved off 30 plus seconds off last weeks time trial. Also, not to mention adding swimming goggles has made a huge difference.

The back story to this post is that I'm training for a sprint triathlon during my off season before I start marathon training on June 1st. I've never done a sprint before and my intention is to use it as a way to cross-train muscles that I don't typically train with just running. April 22nd was a swim day for the week where I attempted to swim a 350 meter time trial to see where I stand compared to week 1. The positive in all this is that the introduction of swimming and biking with my base running, I've seen an improvement in my overall fitness.

Workout: Swim
Time: 9:49 This includes 3 short breaks between 75-100m segments.
Pace: 2:48 / 100m
Speed: 2.13
Distance: 350 meters
Body condition: conditioning getting better
Time of day: lunch
Cool down: 50 meters
Total training distance to date: 1250 meters

This marks the closing of my Columbus Marathon training blog. After this point you'll find my 20 plus week journey in preparation for the 2008 Columbus Marathon when I trained for a 3:16 finishing time and when I met that goal. Enjoy the ride!

I wanted to give everyone an update that the marathon recovery continues. My usual routine after a taxing marathon is to follow a 5 week Hal Higdon recovery plan to ease back into high mileage and racing mode. A week or two was added to that plan since I raced a week after the marathon that caused my hip-flexor to get strained. The next big race that I'm looking at is a marathon between the months of March and May.

Typically it takes a full month to safely recover from a taxing marathon if your not an ultra-runner that runs 20 milers as everyday training. I'm not an ultra runner, so the recovery is personally slow for me with low mile runs of 3 to 10 milers max to little or no running. After attacking a 15k the week after the Columbus Marathon I extremely aggravated my hip flexor that put me in rehab for 4 to 6 weeks. I was blessed to get back to 100% to pace a 3:45 group at Knoxville Marathon in March, but the injury could of been prevented with a little patience.

Everyone is different, so it might take a runner a full month to feel well enough for heavy impact and only a week or two for the fast recovered runners. I'm not an expert at this subject, but I can only assume that injuries are the cause of over training or nagging minor injuries that just add up over time and cause a big injury later. All in all it listen to your body when it needs a break.

The conditions couldn't of been better with a cool temperature of 38 degrees at the start and 50 degrees at the finish. Though it was a bit chilly at first, the gloves and throw-away long-sleeve shirt keep me warm during the early miles. The first 24 miles I felt strong without any extreme laboring, the last two miles where a bit difficult to keep my quick leg turnover. It was a pure guts story from that point to hold steady to the finish line.

I've had friends ask what I think about while I'm running. It's hard to explain with one sentence, so I'll do my best to describe what was going through my thoughts during the race. Near the start line I received some words of encouragement from my friends before leaving them at the 9:00 minute pace coral, upon reaching the 7:00 pace coral I settled into the crowd of runners deep in their warm-up rituals of jumping up and down, stretching, thinking about their race strategy or just looking nervous. This was my fourth marathon race and it felt a bit more relax than the previous. No real worry thoughts like I had at the Nashville Marathon, I mainly stood there thinking about all the training up to that point and help I received from important figures in my life.

After the race started I quickly got into my race routine with quick efficient leg turnover and good running form. I had too if I was going to stay strong for 26.2 miles. Next thing I know I've run 4 miles, after seeing the race mile marker I thought to myself "that went by fast, now onto the next mile". At mile 5 I decided to take my first GU to stay ahead of the electrolytes depletion that would come during the later miles. Next thing I know, boom the mile 6 marker was to my right. That is when I decided not to look at the mile markers to prevent any thoughts of "only 22 miles left and so on...", doing so keep my concentration solely on good running form, personal thoughts and absorbing all the great spectator support. Between miles 6 and 11 was a bit of a blur since one moment I was a mile 6 and the next at mile 11. During those miles I focused on slowing my pace down from a sub 7:10 pace, which would of been disastrous to keep that pace the next 15 miles since I didn't train for that pace.

How I got from mile 11 to mile 21 was just remarkable and effortless, it must of been due to checking my body at mile 16 to decide if I could continue holding a sub 7:17 pace. Though I was on average to finish around 3:13 or so, I decided to slow down to a 7:30 pace to prevent a break down later. My pace varied from 7:17 to 7:30 from miles 16 to 24, then I had to push to finish strong. Miles 24 to 26 is when I hit the wall, it was time to dig deep and focus of the reasons why I decided to run the race. Thoughts of family members who have endured much harder times than I was experiencing gave me the strength to suck it up and do the job at hand. I couldn't of finished the race or gotten to the start line without the Lord's strength and the help of family members and running friends.

I met my goal time to the tee with a 7 minute PR of 3:16:16.

Funny thing, I'm already making plans to run a marathon between March and May. To say that I've been bitten by the marathon bug is an understatement.

http://www.columbusmarathon.com/video

Strength comes from within.