Happy new running year and my shot at a BQ

Chomping a macaron outside Marie Antoinette's place

After the Berlin Marathon and the obligatory post-race post-mortem brouhahas, the natural next question is: what’s next love?
I have a myriad of possible races I could do, but, what do I really want? During my stay at Paris after Berlin, thinking about my race plan over a macaron…naturally…I thought – you know what? Let’s give Boston a shot! It is the next "big" marathon out of the big 6 if you rank them alphabetically....!

I will need to improve by a minimum of 15 minutes from my Gold Coast PB. Is that even possible?

Let me finish my macaron first…

I have no plan of attack. I have heard speedwork will make you faster, but  I have no clue of what they mean. To improve of my current marathon time of 3:49 I will need to reduce around 35 seconds per KM over the course of the marathon. I have no idea how to achieve that. I know how to run more, but clueless otherwise.
Over a catch up with my running buddies one fine day at our regular club runs, my good friend G heard my desire to get a Boston qualifier, and my cluelessness in achieving it.  “You should get a coach if you can afford it.”
That has led me back to a while ago when I had some running analysis done earlier in the year (the dude said I am a bad runner because my quads are out of proportionally large ha ha!). He also mentioned I should get coaching if I want to improve. And so a coach it is.

And so I signed up to a coach to train towards a BQ started in late October, about a month after Berlin. My first session with him was a shock to the system. It was on a boiling 40C day (the hottest October in 2015!) and Mr Coach said “we will do a 5K tempo run around the oval”. Oval? 5K? at 5min pace? 40C day? I wanted to faint before he even finished explaining the workout. 10 laps later I was down to walking speed so he just told me to finish this lap and move on. It was shocking in every way possible. But I was determine to make it happen.

Fast forward to Patriots' Day on 18 April 2016…

    

I have a very good friend who currently resides in Boston, and I always fancy visiting her as well as a desire check out what Harvard is like. Running marathons has given me an extra incentive to go travelling. Knowing that I am keen to run Boston, she venture out to the side line on race day 2016, and took some snaps of the leading man (centre and right) and woman (left). The lady wasn't leading until mile 20 (I think!). I like her grittiness.

After thanking her for her photos, my Boston friend replied: “See you in 2017 :-)”

My interval running buddies

By then I am around 6 months deep in the training phases with those 30K long runs and speedwork. As I reside too far to training with the squad on a regular basic, I invited some of my local running friends to join me during my weekly interval sessions (photo on the right) . They happily obliged, and were especially enthusiastic with the hill sessions…NOT! It was fun doing intervals with them, not only for our weekly catch ups but also taking the sheer pain in doing speedwork. It was also nice to be speaking to other human as opposed to just me and nothingness at 5AM. Usually it is just me and the occasional bird and unleashed dog.

And so now I am waiting at the airport lounge waiting to board my flight to the Gold Coast – in 24 hours time I will know whether all these training was able to get me to where I want to be.