I told you so! Treadmill day 91

I ended up with a surprise day off due to the plumbing emergency my doctor had at her house, causing her to cancel clinic. I wanted to go golfing, but the pounding rain says no.

Yesterday I was talking to a co-worker about the upcoming Whistlestop Marathon less than 3 weeks away, which I'm 90% likely to do. I mentioned to him that I really had not been training for it. "Are you going to?" he asked, to which I replied, essentially, when you're 3 weeks out, what you see is what you get. Not totally true, but good enough of a response for a lay person. Then he asked if I was in shape enough to just go out and run a marathon without training at all. Yup, I replied.

I'm guessing I'll finish Whistlestop in 4:30 or less, which isn't too shabby for not training. I'll probably go out and aim to break 4:00 and fail, coming in around 4:15-20.

Back in the fall of 2006 into 2007 I liked to tell people that I wanted to be fit enough that with a day's notice I could run a marathon in under 4h. And at that point I could. I ran Boston without training in 3:54 in April of 2007.

Anyway, today with my expanse of free time I decided to see what I could do. I was aiming to run a marathon on my treadmill in under 4:30.

I came close, finishing in 4:43. I would have made my goal had I eaten any breakfast (had not) or if I had fueled along the way (did not). This lack of fuel also became part of my personal challenge today--to see how well I could do running a marathon I didn't train for on no food.

How did that go? Well, got to about mile 18 before I really started to not like it. Kept up my 10min/mi pace through 21.36 miles, when I stopped the treadmill. You think running a looped course is tough, that it can be hard to pass your car every mile, or 2 miles, or 10 miles and decide to keep going? Yeah, well it's that much more mentally tough on a treadmill, where all you have to do is push "STOP" and you can be in the shower 3 minutes later and asleep on your couch in 10. I restarted the treadmill and did a tough last 4.84, keeping my running pace going for 0.30 of a mile at a time followed by a 0.20 mile 4mph walk. But I finished. And I finished almost 6 episodes of "The Shield".

Recap: Total of 150 treadmill miles. What a nice round number. Good thing I didn't give up at mile 21.36.