It is recommended in most running guides to focus on a few priority races in a single year. The time in-between these races allow you to build so you can hit peak performance for these races. Other races are encouraged, but usually with a shorter taper and with lower expectations.

My race focus this winter will be for the Credit Union Cherry Blossom 10 Miler. That race will be held April 12th, in Washington, D.C. I am very excited that I got an entry to this race because they have a raffle system to select the 15 thousand plus entrants. I have some pretty high goals for this race. I want to run it in under an hour. I can tell you now that this will be a big challenge. I hope my training between now and then will get me to my goal.

I am going to use a Pete Pfitzinger training plan that is designed for racing a 10 mile race. The schedule lasts 12 weeks and ranges from 45 miles of running per week up to 60 miles. For the past fall I have been running about 45 miles per week so I am hopeful that the tougher weeks will get me to my goal fitness.

I just finished the first week of training and it felt good. I actually started one week early so I could squeeze in an extra race with a short taper next weekend. I'll be running the Vancouver Lake Half Marathon on January 25th, seven days from now. This will be a good race to figure out my current fitness. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a rough fall with my Ulcerative Colitis / anemia and saw a dramatic drop off in my fitness. Now that I am healthy (I can run outside with less worry of finding an emergency bathroom and no more blood loss!) I should be able to see how much the fall difficulties set me back. I was seeing fairly steady improvements up to that point.

I think I am in better shape then I was in August. At that time I ran a 37:22 10 km race. That race would optimistically project to be an 1:22:38 half marathon. I think that is a reasonable B goal for my run. My C goal is 1:25:00. My current PR is 1:29:24 so I fully anticipate beating that time. My A goal is around 1:21:00, which would put me in good position to run an hour 10 miler in April. I would be very excited to run this fast!