Boston - Here I come!

     Originally, I set out to complete a marathon. However, like most projects, this one has had a little scope creep. I didn't know that you don't have to train for a full year before running a marathon if you're fairly active, so I accomplished my goal of running a marathon 4 months early and may have done one a month early if I hadn't been in a car on the way back from Glendale, AZ the day of the SLC Marathon.
     I learned a few things the day I ran the Ogden Marathon that made me consider attempting to qualify for the Boston Marathon during the Top of Utah Marathon. Before then, I didn't know that I could sustain a heart rate over 169 bpm for an extended period of time. During my training, on my long runs I would walk for one minute out of every 20. Sometimes my heart rate would creep up to 172 and then I would walk a minute. During the walk, it would drop to 163 or so, then ramp back up to 169 during the run and repeat... During the last nine miles of the Ogden Marathon, by heart rate was between 179 and 181. My average for that race was 173 with a time of 3:43:54 (about 1:52 per half.) I felt fine and so I wondered how long I sustain a heart rate that high.
     Four weeks later, in the Bear Lake Half Marathon, I found out. Though I regretted it around mile three and at the end of the race, I started out fast and had my heart rate up to 181 in the first couple of minutes. My average heart rate for the entire race was 179, with a time of 1:37:15 - almost a 15 minute improvement over the Ogden Marathon split time. I guess that I ended up losing about 2 minutes over the last three or four miles, but my post race recovery was very short and I had no ill side affects.
     Two months after that, in the Top of Utah Half Marathon, I averaged 178 bpm and decreased my time another 7 minutes to 1:30:03. Double that time and throw in 10 minutes of slowing down or whatever and I could still qualify for Boston! The TOU Marathon adds about 7 miles of down hill to the front and 6 miles of minor ups, and downs and mostly flats to the end. I think I can do it.
     In August though, I was afraid that I was more ready in June than I would be now, with the weeks off hiking. But my average beats per mile (not to be confused with beats per minute in the previous paragraphs) is lower in August and September than it was in June, as well as my average mph is higher in August and September than it was in June. My average mph leading up to this race is 1.26 MPH faster than the last marathon. Building up to the last one, the last 3.5 months I averaged 6.94 mph - 26.2/6.94 = 3 hours and 46.5 minutes. (my time was 3:43.9.) For this one I'm at 8.2 mph - 26.2/8.2 = 3 hours and 11.7 minutes. If I can cut 0.7 minutes off of that, I'm good. For the previous marathon, I spent a lot of time on a treadmill with a 2% incline. For this one, I made my normal runs with hills, a lot steeper than 2%, but then I also went down them...
     Sure, this may all be over analyzed, and it may be extremely hot on Saturday (though the forecast is calling for rain) adding quite a bit of time to the race, but on most projects I spend more time thinking about them than actually doing them. I can't really do much about a project while I'm laying in bed, driving, sitting in a boring meeting, running (except the marathon), or eating. In this case though, I've put in the time, now all that remains is to actually run it to see if I can shave off 33 minutes from the last one!