Another Rest Day (and what it takes to beat Palin)

C - 0 miles, lots of sort-of push ups

Today was another scheduled rest day for D and me.  I did my push up challenge, but I'm definitely feeling out of shape from all of the rich food that I've enjoyed this break.

I've been thinking more about my ultimate long, long, long term running goal - running the Boston Marathon.  For those who aren't completely running obsessed, understand that there are two main ways that runners qualify to run Boston.  One way is to run as a charity runner, which is an awesome way to go about qualifying and often requires the runner to raise a lot of money for charity before they get to race.  The second way to get in is to time qualify.  I'd love to run Boston as a charity runner in the future, but I dream of time qualifying.  As a female between the ages of 18 and 34, this means running a marathon in 3 hours 35 minutes (for D it means 3 hours 5 minutes!).  That means a pace of 8 minutes 12 seconds per mile for 26.2 miles.  In my world, that also means I have to run faster than my half marathon PR pace of 8 minutes 39 seconds per mile, and I have to run twice as far.

Still following? Get ready for a final nerdy number.  For my next big half marathon goal, I'd like to run a half marathon at the pace I'll need to run a full marathon at to qualify.  The time is still a bit of a stretch for me and it will take me a while to achieve it, but this means my big new half marathon goal is 1 hour 47 minutes and 29 seconds.  Bring it! (Oh yeah, and Sarah Palin ran a half in September in 1 hour 46 minutes 10 seconds- information here - so that is definitely another time to beat. . .)