Thinking Negatively

Topic: A New Key to Chicago Success
Key Words: Hammered, Glycogen, Time in the Bank
Word Count: 324
Likely Next Topic: Why Wizards Don't Run Marathons

So I have a new plan for Chicago. As eluded to earlier, I'm going to try a negative split. In previous runs, I did exactly what negative believers said not to do; I put time in the bank. Example, marathon #2, I ran to the half-way point in 2:00:08, leaving me with a 30 minute cushion to make 4:30; I could run 11:27 miles the rest of the way and make my goal, surely I could do that, right? No, I couldn't. Instead, I was HAMMERED after the wall hit and average 12:08 miles over the back half; 3 minutes per mile slower on the back than on the front.

Negative split purists would say it is because I wiped out my glycogen stores too early; built up my lactic acid levels too early; had spells of anaerobic running too early. So if I want to run a 4:30 using negative splits, I should run a bit over the average that it takes, 10:18, for the first half, and pick it up during the second. However, 10:00 even sounds better (gives me a little bit of a bank of time!), and I'm sure if I shoot for 10:00, I'll probably have some 10:18s thrown in there near rest stops.

If I make it to the half running 10:00s, and I'm blasted, I'll certainly know I can give up on Oprah's time, and will have to fall back to some secondary time goal. However, as I stated many posts ago, only fools repeat the same steps and expect different outcomes. For the past two marathons I've trained fairly well, built up a bank of time over the first half, and crashed violently over the second half. As contrary as this idea seems, it's certainly one whose time has come.