Thinking of changing things up.

For the last few years my training has centered around ultras. So in the afternoons when I could go running for and hour or so, I would only get in 5 or 6 miles because I was running at a slower pace. My weekend mornings were spent running for 4~6 hours in the wee hours before the sun started showing its face.

But now that my kids are getting older and getting more involved with sports and other extra curricular activities I want to spend more time with the family than I do beating feet on the pavement.

That's not too say I'm done running. Oh no! Far from it in fact! Just that I'm going to change the way I run to better suit my current lifestyle.

I think I'm going to center my training around running faster. There's no way to run 6 hours in any time shorter than 6 hours without approaching the speed of light (the speed of gravity), and I'm no Usain Bolt so I don't see that happening any time soon.

But I can run more miles in what time I do have by running at a faster pace.

If I have an hour's worth of time to train in, then I should be able to get to the point to where I can run 8 miles relatively comfortably within a few months and eventually work myself up to 10 miss within that hour.

...

My old hometown just had its local marathon (The Gusher Marathon) and the winning time was a 3:00:57... Don't take that the wrong way, that's a very fast time for sure... But it shouldn't be fast enough to WIN a marathon in my opinion. I made a deal with myself a long long time ago that I wouldn't run a marathon until I was confident that I could debut under the coveted 3 hour mark.

So I think that in order to get there I will need to be able to go sub 1:20 in a half marathon a few times, and have a good endurance base set up as well.

I want to start winning races and not just in my age group.

Now, I'm not giving up on ultras. I still want to try to get in 2 or 3 weekend morning long runs per month. Just a few hours of a nice leisurely pace down some old county roads is just what the doctor ordered some times.