'gruecd said:
And as far as the lesson to be learned, I'm not really sure exactly what it is. I don't want to discourage people from setting aggressive goals, because there's nothing to be gained by playing it safe all the time, either. Sometimes you have to go for it. You just need to be aware of the potential consequences, and while I was definitely prepared for the physical pain, I guess I wasn't quite ready for the emotional let-down. Now I'm just trying to channel that disappointment and use it to fuel an awesome training cycle for this fall. Weather permitting, I figure I've got two good shots at sub-3 with fast courses in Milwaukee and Houston. Hopefully I won't need the second one.
I typed up a response to your earlier post and deleted it because I wanted to chew it over a little. You're raising a point that I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about during this cycle. My own marathon is less than a month away (5/21). My training has gone pretty well, and I've spent the entire cycle preparing for 3:50 (8:47/mi), which would be a PR by almost 9 minutes. Okay, it's not the same as aiming for sub-3:00, but it's an aggressive but not unachievable goal for somebody like me to shoot for. But I keep asking myself if it's really worth it to risk the emotional downside of a blown race just to hit an arbitrary race time that nobody but me cares about. I've only done two marathons in the past (one bad, one good), so while I'm not new to the distance, it isn't like I've done a ton of these where a single bad outcome wouldn't be a big deal. And it's not like this is a half, where if you have a bad result you can wash the taste out of your mouth a month later. This is the only marathon I'll do this year, and there's a good chance that I won't be able to do another one for 18+ months depending on my work schedule. Whatever happens in May is something that I'll have to live with for a pretty long time. Part of me just wants to have a good experience with this race -- with a more conserative time goal -- and be happy instead of blowing up and having that gnaw at me for the next year or so. I still have my last 22-miler to do, so I'll see how that goes before I make any firm decisions. Right now, I'm thinking about aiming for a 9:00 pace, which would still give me a PR by a couple of minutes, and only shooting for 8:47 if race-day conditions are very good. But this is based more on utility maximization and weighing the psychological benefits/costs of a good race that maybe could have been a little better versus shooting for a really good race with a serious chance of a meltdown.This is just me thinking out loud, on a point that your posts did a great job of raising.