Well I have been looking over my personal schedule for this fall, my work commitments and I don’t a fall marathon will fit into my schedule. I have a lot of projects around the house, some weddings and my work load in my day job is looking insane. Thus I am going to withdraw my lottery entry for the NYC marathon and focus on running two half marathons (Portland Maine 10/04, and the Baystate on 10/18).
In this tough economy my day job is pushing me to do a lot more with a lot less so I am looking at 60-80 hour work weeks starting in August through November so training 35 to 50 miles a week for a full marathon might lead me to divorce court. Thus training for a half marathon will be a lot more manageable and keep me out of divorce proceedings.
I have a PR of 2:04:18 in Portland from last year and I think that a sub two hour half marathon is a very realistic goal since in the past year I have gotten my race fueling under control. I am going to continue my 20-25 base mile training going between now and July when my 18 week training plan will begin. I am looking to add speed workouts and tempo runs into my base mile training to get my 5k time back to my 24:35 PR from last year (or faster). This will get me at the correct starting point for the paces I am looking to hit for my training plan.
In regards to training plans I have decided to use the FIRST Half Marathon Plan and here is my logic on why:
1. ) I like the idea of 3 key workouts focused on quality of quantity.
2.) I want to add Speed and Tempo runs into my training plan since to run a fast race I need to train at a fast pace.
3.) The concept of trading junk mile runs with cross training to reduce overtraining running injuries makes a lot of sense to me. I know I need to incorporate cycling, rowing, spinning and swimming into my routine to help with my aerobic conditioning without the wear and tear of adding running miles. This would replace the Tuesday and Thursday 3-5 mile runs I do with 30-50 minutes of cross training.
4.) I will utilize the Training Effect on my Suunto T3C to identify the appropriate effort level of my cross training equals the aerobic conditioning I would have gotten from the run. So if I do rowing I am more focused on hitting a Training Effect of a 3.0 for the effort which is what I would have gotten on a run.
5.) Add in my strength training and yoga.
6.) If this works for getting me below two hours then this might be plan for my next marathon.
I am open to ideas and opinions on this plan. I am like most of you, I need a plan that gets me prepared but at the same time deals with the reality of family commitments, work, sleep and sanity.
Cheers,
Tim
1 comment:
Tim,
I train very similar to the plan you mention. I end up with at least three "rest" days a week and three to four quality runs geared toward tempo, interval or time (distance)
I limit my "junk" miles and now that it is spring I will be swimming on rest nights for crosstraining.
I can't tell you what is the best way to train but I can say that if you can find a way to get in the quality training miles and not have injuries, then you will run better races.
I will admit that I am not running as fast a pace as I used to when I trained the other way, but back then I was always suffering some kind of pain or injury.
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