Archive for January 8th, 2009

Continuing my between-cycle search for out of the ordinary (for me, anyway) running entertainment, yesterday’s treat was a 7-mile Progression run.  Brad Hudson or Greg McMillan will tell you they’re a surefire way to get a little extra aerobic aerobic improvement out of an easy run without the need for recovery.  Plus, they’re real fun.

Here’s Mcmillan’s Progression Run page, if you’re interested.

A great byproduct of the zippier runs I’ve been up to lately is that they’re introducing me to potential marathon goals for next Fall.   When I trained for Steamtown, the only time I ever ran marathon pace was on the two MP runs Pfitzinger had in his plan.  That pretty much sucks, because if you’re feeling like crap that day or even for that matter, feeling amazing, two tries seems like a dinky sample for such a huge event.

Which is why I’m an official race-pace convert now (and this extends to all race distances).  Whether it occurs in the form of intervals, tempos, steady state or part of a long run, I’m all about rehearsing race pace as part of the training block.

So it occurred to me that my faster easy runs these days double as a kind of audition process for future marathon pace.  I mean, not really truly quite yet, because it’s way too early, but it’s pretty cool to be running 8:xx and think, “yeah, gimme 11 months and I could do this for 26.2″.

Back to reality and the calendar, Hudson’s Half plan was supposed to begin this coming Sunday.  However, because my mileage and workouts are already ahead of his basebuilding phase, I’m going to jump into his plan a bit later, continuing on my own for now, though including his progression runs and hill repeats in the interim.

It’s strange, doing a truncated plan before a goal race – I’m so used to having 16 weeks laid out for me – but I realize that’s a mental thing, it’s not like I won’t be training well these next few weeks – six weeks, actually.  His threshold runs don’t even begin till week 7, so in essence, the main Hudson contribution will amount to a 10-week plan.

Looks like Excel and I will be spending some quality time together as we figure out how best to fill in the blanks.  Good thing I love that stuff.