Can I leave my younger self in the dust?

I've been silent for the lat couple weeks, which is in direct conflict with my pledge to write more often. Part of it has been the heat, which in addition to stifling my running happened to stifle my willingness to do just about anything productive. Part of it, too, has been a case of writer's block, which I'd love to blame on the heat but which really stemmed from a place of frustration.

If you're among the dozen people who reads this blog, you'll remember that I boldly proclaimed I'd be running a marathon later this year. Shortly after doing so, life intervened, training was derailed a bit, and I began to regret being so bold. I feared writing anything that might further embarrass me.

Last week, though, I came up with a goal for my upcoming marathon, which will be my eighth. I'm aiming to beat the 3:22:45 that I ran in my first, the 2001 BayState Marathon.

That race was a trip. I was a junior in college and had just turned 21. My longest training run had been 18 miles, and that was only because I got lost in Jamaica Plain, or Allston, or somewhere nowhere near my apartment. When race day came, I actually maintained a Boston Marathon qualifying pace -- that is, 7:15 per mile -- for about 16 miles. Then my legs stopped working. I leaned against a telephone pole in North Chelmsford for a minute or so, then commenced a 10-mile walk-jog of shame to the finish line. For several days, it hurt to move.

So, yeah, my goal is to run faster at 32 than I did at 21. I benefit from experience these days -- in my last race, the 2011 Hyannis Marathon, I started slowly, kept myself hydrated and ran something close to negative splits en route to a 3:26:22. I felt good enough to hop in my car, drive home and work the next day. (Oh, and it snowed at the beginning and the end of the race. Then again, as you can probably guess, I enjoyed that.)

This time around, I have a training plan -- Run Less, Run Faster, a tough but manageable three-day-a-week schedule -- and a much better sense of my limits. My schedule is just as hectic, I can't run quite as well if I'm hungover or overtired, I need to stretch my legs even on the days that I don't run, and my training is already a bit behind, but my soon-to-be-32-year-old self is fairly confident that he'll be able to pass his 21-year-old self in the last few miles of the race and not look back.

And if I don't? Well, I'll just make fun of the terrible haircut and fashion sense of my 21-year-old self that much more.