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Trying to Improve From a 2:35 to a 2:30 Marathoner
Seeing improvement in running as a winding, nonlinear journey
About a month ago, I got the flu. It knocked me out and incapacitated me for several days and was the worst illness I had gotten for several years. I had a fever and chills for several days, and did not feel like I could function at all for several days. This was problematic for many areas of my life, including as a teacher and law student, but I found it especially problematic as someone training for yet another marathon.
I have a marathon in two weeks, one where I have been increasing the volume and intensity of my training. My goal is to run 2:30 in the marathon, which is an average of 5:43 mile pace. In the fall, I ran 2:35:40, which is an average of 5:56 mile pace, so a five minute personal best, especially at a level where it’s hard to improve by that much, would mean a quite a lot.
Before I got the flu, I had been averaging 70 miles a week of running for at least three months. I thought all the training was all of a sudden ruined. For one week, I only ran 10 miles, and the next week, I still was not 100% and ran about 50 miles, still having congestion when I did run.
