A week ago, I posted about some of my goals for 2010. A few days ago, I took the first step toward achieving those goals. My goal time is 2:10. Realistic? Probably not considering that my first half was 3:03.

So why did I pick 2:10?

Well, I use a couple of cool apps from Maverick Software: Race Pace and TriCalc. Race Pace is pretty cool in that if you give it a finish time for a particular distance, it can give you a rough idea of your finish time and pacing for other distances. Accurate? I don’t know, but it’s the best I got right now.

Well, using Race Pace, I entered my 5K PR of 32:45 and it estimates a half marathon time of about 2:30. I believe, however, that I can do much better than 32:45 in the 5K. For one thing, I was 271 pounds when I did the Komen. Considering that I’m already down to 262 and plan to be less than 225 by the time of the half, I expect to be a faster, stronger runner by then.

Because of that, I just decided to shoot for faster time than Race Pace was giving me. I chose 2:10 for no good reason aside from the fact that I think I can do it. I put 2:10 into Race Pace for the half marathon and it’s telling me that I should be able to do a 28:15 5K… Yeah, I think I can do that. I recall seeing a table in Runner’s World that shows improvements expected at certain levels of weight loss. Yeah, I know that it’s a very, very rough guide at best, but I’ll go with it for now… extrapolating from that table and given my weight loss goal, I am expecting a 5 minute improvement in my 5K time to about 27:22.

Yeah, I think I can do that. I will do that.

Oh, as I side note: I signed up for a Thanksgiving Day 5K: the Turkey Strut 5K in Winston-Salem.