"Pace" run

2.8 miles (4.5 km) | 24:10 | 8:38/mile (5:22/km)

My current goal is to finish a marathon, and I'd like to run sub-4 hours. The training program I'm (loosely) following has a pace run at marathon pace once per week. The run comes on Saturday in the program, but I've shifted the entire program one day to move the long runs to Saturday and leave Sunday as a cross-training day. (I have a lot of travel planned on Sundays already this summer.)

For my little 4.5 km run around the "block", I was targeting 25:35, which is a 9:09/mile pace. I was under that, but I pushed the last half kilometer or so just to see how it felt. My big goal was just to make sure I got out and ran. I don't want to skip days (at least not in the first month before I develop the habit).

I've registered for the Amsterdam marathon, which is October 19. That puts it about 20 weeks out from when I started the training program. I was also targeting that weekend (or the one before) because they are the two weekends of the fall vacation (efterårsferie) in Denmark so the whole family could travel with me. We had a vacation flight canceled on us in May, so we have vouchers for another flight to somewhere in Europe.

That means, if I can stick to my training program, that our fall vacation will be to Amsterdam.