Road map

Buried in the comments of a post below is my Colorado Marathon goal of sub-4:00.  There's still a lot of time before that day, nearly six months, and that's probably a good thing.  I have a lot of ground to cover, so to speak.  I punched a 3:59:59 marathon into McMillan to see what my minimum goal times for shorter races should be if I want to achieve a sub-4:00 marathon.  Given the 28 min 5K+ (the race director really should mark the course better) I ran at the Tortoise and Hare series last weekend it's easy to be discouraged.  Being a glass half full kind of guy I like to remember that I ran 1M and 5K distances faster than those paces last April and was within a minute or so at the 8K and 12K distances last spring.  And if I really drink the kool-aid I could take my Pineridge Downhill Mile times and Towers times and convert them to marathon potential using the FCTR correlations.  My PB's on these courses suggest a 3:45 would be possible.  Clearly the correlation falls apart as runners get slower.  3:45?  That's crazy talk.  I'll wait until March to think about that.

I believe I can get to sub-4 though.  It's good to have a road map with some check points on it to track progress and help set goals, so mine is below.  As the Tortoise and Hare series winds down in the spring and as the spring racing season starts I hope to be crossing off all these distances and times.

Distance	Time	Pace
1M	07:06	07:06
4K	19:17	07:46
5K	24:37	07:55
4M	32:12	08:03
8K	40:34	08:10
10K	51:08	08:14
12K	1:02:23	08:22
Half	1:53:47	08:41
Marathon	3:59:59	09:09
PDM	07:20	07:20
Towers	49:28	14:20