Hey Girl - Tell Me All Your Marathon Plans

Before we get into today's post - it's time to announce the ShowerPill Giveaway winner!  Out of 50 comments random.org picked #5 and #30 like a good boy.  And the two winners are...  drumroll please.....

#5 was Danielle at Long May You Run:

And #30 was Leslie:

Email your mailing address to ricoleruns@gmail.com within one week to claim your prize!  Also - final thoughts: people brought up CAMPING which is a GENIUS idea for using ShowerPill wipes.  Okay okay, enough about that.

On to today's post!  I already whined and complained to you about Sunday's race.  It sucked, yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah.  It's time to suck it up and move on.  The pity party is officially over.  So what's next, you might ask?  Or you might not care.  Either way.

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First let's check out some of the 20+ pictures they took of me at the race.  Seriously, didn't you know I'm famous and need my own batch of paparazzi?  Well now you do.  They took some real gems too, like this one:

This is possibly the most flattering picture EVER.  My facial expression = priceless.  And I'm not sure what's going on with my legs but I'm pretty sure that's not an appropriate running gait. 

They also took about 5 that looked like this:

They also did a good job of documenting my inability to overcome my heel strike addiction:

MarathonFoto is serious about those copyright things huh?  Sorry MarathonFoto.  Next time capture the one where I actually smiled and thumbs-uped the camera (I swear that happened).

There's a tiny bit of a smile and thumbs-up behind that man in red. 

So what's next for me?  Well, Seattle Rock n Roll is a mere 29 days away and it's time to get serious.  I want that PR BAD - and I'm not letting Sunday's confidence-busting race get me down.  That PR WILL be mine.  The magic number we're looking for here is sub 3:55 people, however that's not my real goal.  My real goal is around 3:45, however I wanted to make sure this number was still an accurate prediction. Mile Posts posted a PERFECTLY timed post about choosing a goal pace for the marathon, which included more than just my go-to move: McMillan. 

McMillan Pace Calculator predicts that my marathon time can be around 3:47:25, for an average pace of 8:41.  This is based on Sunday's goal - the prediction from my Lincoln City time is 3:44:26. 

RunBayou provides a bit more information and predicts the potential for a 3:40:43 (based on Lincoln City's time), however I think this is a bit too ambitious this go around.

But based on this information, I revised my training calendar for the 5 weeks I have left until the marathon:

Here's what I added - what was lacking (or inconsistent) before.  The focus of my last 5 weeks is threefold:

1. Keep up the trackwork - CONSISTENCY IS KEY.
2. Incorporate Marathon Pace (MP) miles (8:35).  So far I've done ZERO MP miles.  Ever.  In my life.  
3. Incorporate HILLS.  We all know I'm horrendous at hill climbing, and that RnR Seattle is definitely going to be hilly.  It's tough when I only run 3 days a week to do all these different workouts (I'm already hoping to go back up to 4 days a week after this marathon training cycle is over and see if my body can handle it - just gotta get through the last 5 weeks injury free knock on wood), so it seems like doing hilly long runs is best. 

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Any tricks to magically improve hill-climbing skills?  Perhaps without actually climbing hills?  Send me your best hill workouts!