First, despite what I just said, there’s no running today. That’s because of two reasons - I have to be up at 4am tomorrow to go to the airport, and today’s my 1st wedding anniversary. What a combination! Anyway…

More to the point, some of you may be wondering why I was aiming to do my 10K last weekend at an 8:00 pace, even though my Pace Chart has me running a 7:24. Its easy: I’m not that fast. Yet. Those are my goal paces for four months from now - next February, to be precise. I’m okay with not being there yet.

How will I get there? I’m doing my speedwork at the McMillan recommended times for those paces. I’m going to continue to use 8:00 as my target pace for the upcoming race series, up to and including the 30k, for which McMillan shows me needing an 8:03 pace. If I’m correct, and I continue to do my speedwork and hill training as I build my endurance levels, my short-distance times should continue to drop as the season progresses.

I’ll have an interesting opportunity to test this on Thanksgiving when I’ll be running a nice short five mile Turkey Trot. And then, I will be going for speed - probably aiming at a 7:30 pace or thereabouts. That will let me know how well the theories stand up to real world effort. Heck, maybe I’ll just shoot for the “official” 7:20 goal, being willing to go down in flames I feel like it. Still, that’s not sounding all that hard at the moment. The 7:20, not going down in flames, although that’s probably pretty easy too.

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