Bridesmaids, Tempos, Tastings and 20 Milers

My life outside of work has been consumed for the last 5 weeks by two things: wedding planning and marathon training. I thought it would be a good time for a status update.

Wedding Planning

Planning has been going well! In the last 5 1/2 weeks I’ve secured a venue (wedding date is September 28 of this year!), hired our day of wedding coordinator (she works for the venue), secured a discounted room block at our host hotel, bought my wedding dress, chose our wedding colors (light grey, white and yellow) booked our wedding photographer, took engagement photos (my step-mom is a wedding photographer so she took the photos), printed and added labels to all our Save the Date cards. We’re waiting to send the Save the Dates until we finish our wedding website which has been more work than anticipated (also narrowing down a guest list was very tough as well)!

I also asked all 9 of my bridesmaids to stand by my side on my big day. I was able to see 8 of them in person but one I had to mail out. I had these grand plans for how to ask Asia to be my Maid of Honor. One idea I had was to get a poster board and surprise her one of her runs by holding the sign up (i.e. like a race sign) asking her to be my MOH. Another idea was to make a tank top asking her and wear it to the Hot Chocolate Race. in the end, i just came over to her house with wine and flowers and the card I made her. She was thrilled and of course said yes!  For all the other bridesmaids, I gave them cards that I made using materials I bought at Michael’s. I was proud of my craftiness!

Tonight we have a tasting with a caterer who I really feel good about. We already had one tasting and it was very generic and greasy food and I was not thrilled. The caterer we are seeing tonight already had us over to her house for wine and appetizers and we discussed our “vision” for our big day as well as constructed a menu with her help. Tonight we’ll try the menu and I’m very hopeful! She is affordable and creative with her food.

Marathon Training

Marathon training has been going as well as wedding planning! A week and a half ago after my not so great 20 mile run, my coach emailed me this:

When I analyzed the file from the 15km last week this is what I came up with. You actually went through the 9.3 mile mark in 1:10:56 which is a 7:37 pace. The normalized pace which is what we call the effort taking into account the hills would have been 7:29 pace that equates to a 1:09:35 time. That puts us in the 3:28 range now for your marathon goal.

I wouldn’t worry too much about how the run went today, bottom line is that you got the mileage in and we know where your fitness is right now based on the races and other workouts and you know why you suffered a bit towards the end of the run.

Yahoo! Although I’m not so sure about that 3:28 remark,I am at this point pretty confident that if baring any serious craziness on race day, I can qualify for Boston. One of the reasons I don’t believe that I can run a 3:28 is that a) he adjusted my time for the course being exactly 9.3 miles yet Eugene certainly won’t be exactly 26.2 and b) I didn’t stop for water at all during the last two races and I will definitely be using aid stations at Eugene (whether or not it’s to refill my handheld water bottle or to use the cups is TBD).

At this point though, I do think I have what it takes to clear the 3:35 mark at Eugene. All I am hoping for is to cross the 25 mile marker knowing that even if I ran a 10 min/mile (or slower!) from there on out that I’d still qualify. I want to enjoy the moment I’m crossing the finish line as a Boston Qualifier, not be racing the clock for the last mile. But of course, if I have to race the clock to get it, that’s fine too!

My tempo runs have been going well and my pace for tempos has dropped from the high 7:40s/low 7:50s when I first started working with my coach to the 7:15-7:25 range (depending on the length of the tempo interval). I ran 22 miles at a 8:53 average this past weekend and it was the best I’ve felt on a 20+ mile training run. It didn’t seem like I was pushing it too hard. I was ready to be finished at the end but I knew I could run 4 more miles at that pace. This coming weekend I have my last big run – a 20 miler with the last 6 miles at marathon goal pace (8:08 ish). I really hope this will be a confidence boosting long run going into my final 2 weeks of training.

18 days til Eugene and 171 days until our wedding!