goals

I promise that I will stop blogging obsessively about running and marathoning in the near future, but for the time being, you will have to put up with it.  Sorry.  I have already planned my first non-marathon related blog: It will be about yellow dust.  I know, I know, you are now dying with anticipation.

Anywho, one useful strategy I have found while planning to race is to have a pyramid of goals.  If I have just one goal and the race starts going poorly in the beginning or half way, I just give up.  But if I have a back up goal, then I can still keep working towards something instead of giving up.  (read: the goal thing is all mental...)

I use letters (like grades) to explain my goals.  Yes, I am nerd.  My friends and I did this during college.  Sample conversion from last year:
Me: "Hi friend, what is your goal for Saturday?"
Friend: "Well, my B goal is (time) because that would be my PR, but my A goal is (time) because I really want to run sub-(another time)" so on and so forth.

The Pyramid of Goals for the Cherry Blossom Marathon 2011:

A: 3:55 - this is 9 minute pace for the whole 26.2 miles.

                             B: 4 hours!  This has been what I have been training for!  I do not care if I run 3:59:59.99999..(one time in college I ran an indoor 5k in 20:59.99)

                   C: 4:38:00 - this is the time that Ada (from Biggest Loser, Season 10) ran her marathon. 
          D: Anything over 5 hours (you are only given 5 hours to finish - eek!)
F : Don't finish.  Die.  Injure myself in some bad way.

This morning, I got a text on my lovely Korean cellphone.  It looked like spam.  I get a lot of spam text messages.  But I checked with co-teacher before deleting it.  It was actually the Mail Man (I am not sure of his actual position).  The Mail Man was texting me to make sure that I would be home between 10am-1:30pm to receive the package he would be delivering to me.  Thank you Co-teacher for calling the Mail Man and explaining the situation with the "waygook" (that is the only word of the whole conversation that I understood).
Anywho, the Mail Man finally found me and delivered my race number (the ever lucky #2048) shoe chip, free bag (I guess you get a bag and not a Tshirt?)  and some information in Korean.
Get this: the Korean Radioactive-waste Management Corporation paid for my bib number.  Thank you Korean Radioactive-waste Mangament Corporation!  I hope you are doing your job well.

I was trying to find some motivational quotes about marathon running.  I found this one from Ann Trason, "It hurts up to a point and then it doesn't get any worse." I think women say the same thing about giving birth. Awesome.