And the racing season has arrived

IMG00129, originally uploaded by yumkerun.

Picked up my race kit for the 5K I'm doing on Sunday. Over the course of four weeks, I'll have three races. Each one I have a bunch of goals that I'll lay out here:

Achilles 5K (March 16): This is my first race of the year so I'm looking forward to getting back into race shape. I run an 18 miler the morning before so I'm not going to treat it as a goal race or anything. I do want to, however, use it as a faster than LT run. Goal 1 is to go sub 21. Goal 2 is to hit 21:30. Final goal is to go sub 22 although I'd be pretty disappointed if I can't at least hit 21:30.

Around the Bay 30K (March 30): This is going to be a fun, interesting race. We'll see how the weather cooperates. The ATB is a historic race and I'm excited to run it for the first time. I've also never run a 30K before. In the latter third of the course, there are major hills (which I've run once with R. since her parents live in the area) so it'll be perfect training for the Flying Pig Marathon. I want to treat this as an uber marathon-pace run, which means targetting 4:40 to 4:45Ks. In DC last fall, I passed the 30K mark at about 2:19:30 for the Marine Corps Marathon. The year before that at the Chicago Marathon, I passed the 30K mark in 2:23:31. I'm not sure I want to figure out what my 30K race pace is, so I'm going to target marathon pace and go for 2:22 (plus or minus a few minutes for the hills). But to run a 2:22, I'll have to be in marathon pace shape for long distance so we'll see. A 2:30 I think is very achievable at my current training. If there's a run this training cycle that'll get me marathon ready, this will be it. 19 miles of MP. I will taper properly for this one.

Spring Run-Off 8K (April 5): This is a week later, and it'll be fun because I'll probably see quite a few of my ex-co-workers (the old employer sponsors the race). I've run it twice and it killed me last year so I am hungry to destroy my course PR of 35:46. I tried to beat it last year but I was sorely undertrained and I couldn't do it. This has big hills so it's a little challenging.

So I have a fun month of racing to look forward to... It'll give a little more purpose to the the marathon training.