Back on track!

I'm home and back on track! The running track, that is, for my standard three timed-mile workout. It's not the official start of my IMFL training, which is tomorrow, but it's getting me geared up. This gives me my benchmark times for one mile workout running times (min:sec), which I can use over the winter as pretty good indicators of progress in improving my fitness. These aren't full-out running my absolute fastest mile, but just about as fast as I can go right now and still repeat the distance a few times (perhaps close to my 5K pace? haven't run one in a while):

• 10:42
• 10:42
• 10:21

Hey! Those are 1:15+ faster than I did October 22, a week after the Baltimore Marathon! I guess that two weeks complete rest since the NY City Marathon did me some good!

My marathon benchmark times (hr:min) right now, from Baltimore and New York, are:

• 5:59
• 6:33

Since those are on fairly challenging courses, I'm hoping that those times will represent close to what I'll be able to do on the flat IMFL course after swimming and biking (and the improvement in fitness that fifty weeks of training should give me). I'd like to think I can do the marathon at Disneyworld in January at something close to 6:30 (on a crowded but flat course), but I have NO idea right now how I'll feel after 16.2 miles the previous day. Well, I do have an idea, I'll probably definitely feel like crap. Maybe I mean I have no idea how well I'll be able to actually run that day when I'm sore and while feeling like crap. As long as I can make it in under the seven hour marathon cutoff and earn my Mickey and Goofy medals, I'll be happy.

I'll work on accumulating some cycling and swimming benchmarks in the next couple weeks, to plot the starting point of my journey of the next year as I make my way to Ironman Florida.