Posts Tagged ‘training plans’

It’s no secret, I’ve been in bad attitude land with Marathon training; it’s cold and windy and I haven’t felt like putting forth real effort yet.  But I’ve been working my way back.

One of the things I started yesterday was to add 3 MP miles to my run.  I was severely lacking in race pace miles last time and that’s something  I want to correct this time out.  I figured I’d add a bit each week, next week do 5, the next week do 8, etc.  Seemed a good way to ingrain the pace without any stress.

Meanwhile, the days are ticking by and I needed to get a plan underway, so today I bought Pfitzinger’s second edition of Advanced Marathoning.  I used his first edition for Steamtown and had heard this new one had more MP miles, so I pretty much decided that’s what I’d use.

But when I finally looked at the plan and saw that there were exactly 4 MP runs and the first one should have been last week and was 8 miles at MP (8 MP in week 16?) I wasn’t happy.  Seems like 8 MP so early in the game would be better replaced by a tempo run, since it’s going to feel about as sucky anyway and give more physiological benefit.  But I digress.

More importantly, I don’t want to reserve MP miles for “special”  and with only four of them (3 actually, since I already missed one) it qualifies as that, because for me at this time, that would defeat the purpose of doing them.  I italicize that because I’m sure if I’d have picked up the book 6 months ago, I’d have no quibble with 4 big MP runs (save for the natural dread involved), but at this point they only look like drudge workouts.  Besides, I don’t want to dread MP runs, I want to get used to them so it ain’t no big deal, that’s my whole goal here.

Then I remembered ole Hal Higdon.  I’ve always dismissed his plans for looking too simplistic: they don’t have “cycles”, the mileage is low, the workouts are basically the same thing with more reps each week.  However, one thing I’ve always thought was pretty cool was that he has MP runs almost every Saturday before the LR, which works two-fold, you get your MP miles while at the same time it tuckers you out a bit for Sunday’s LR, the better to give you that marathon feeling.  And he even has some mid-week MP runs as well.  All told, he has 17 MP runs in an 18-week plan!  And they graduate from short to longer, just like I wanted to do.

So I started looking longer at his Advanced Plan II and wonder of wonders…the spark began to return.  His simplicity was suddenly a fantastic thing in my eyes: I could easily add mileage to it, the fact that it alternates tempo, hill and intervals each week while adding an additional short tempo or pace run a couple days later seemed perfect, plus, I’m going to keep some rest days in there.  It was exactly a year ago that I went to 7 days, but marathon training in the winter is going to annoy me double, so having a day off for especially windy/crappy days will be a treat.

And only three 20s instead of 4.  Will I be under prepared?  I don’t think so, those MP runs are going to be a great help.  My pal RedDogRunning from the 3:20 thread just used it (only did two 20s, matter of fact) and had a huge PR last week – said those MP runs made him feel “locked into pace the whole way”.  Music to my ears.

So I feel like training again!  No longer overwhelmed or dreading it, the little thrill was back when I transcribed the numbers and notes into my Excel calendar (and I did this twice today…the Pfitz time wasn’t so joyful).  Thank god, because I was seriously wondering how I was going to get through the next 4 months doing something I didn’t want to do.

Yay.  Just yay.

I didn’t get a chance to wish everyone a happy holiday, sorry about that.  I had a great couple of days with friends, hope you all had fun, too.

Yesterday should have started my Boston cycle.  I like 16-week cycles and always get excited when I start a new one, but I’m having a really hard time wrapping my head around marathon training again.  Racing in any form is not appealing to me at all right now.

Philly fucked me up.  I’ve lost a huge chunk of confidence and I’m not sure when it’s coming back.  It’s one thing to fuck up a race, it’s another to have absolutely no clue as to why it happened or what to adjust so it doesn’t happen the next time.  Those last miles are etched on my brain indelibly with no signs of dimming, and this is the first time in my running life that I don’t have hope.

I’m supposed to sign up for the Shamrock Half in March with my gal pals but I’m not feeling it.  Chicago, which I’d said I wanted to do because the course is fabulous and it’d be another huge social event, is sounding to me like just another chance to bomb in a major way.  I’m thinking I probably should stick with Boston as my one marathon this year since even that is tinged with dread.

So here I am, 16 weeks from Boston and I haven’t a clue as to how to proceed.  I started doing fartleks this week because I need to get my legs moving but it’s hard to imagine wanting to do quality sessions again.  I know it’s stupid but I feel like all those tempos and intervals betrayed me last cycle so putting out the effort now doesn’t seem worth it.  I’ll get over it, I’m sure.

As for what to do, this being the first time I’ve hit 16-weeks out without a plan firmly in place, if I follow Hudson, you’re supposed to adjust each cycle to tweak what was lacking in the previous one, but frankly, I don’t know what that is!  I don’t know what went wrong and what was right.  Maybe I’ll just buy Pfitzinger’s 2nd edition of Advanced Marathoning so I don’t have to think about it and can just follow blindly.  I don’t have the energy for much more than that right now.

Yesterday was Vova’s funeral which ended up being a wonderful day-long affair with a luncheon for 40 and a boozy party afterwards.  He would have loved it, the sweetie.

Occasionally I link to music on this blog and while my main favorite genre is Alternative, I’m a sucker for any style so long as there’s a great hook or a beautiful melody.  Nick made a wonderful slideshow of Vova through the decades with a heart-ripping A Capella song as the soundtrack.  It’s by a Ukrainian group called Pikkardiyska Tertsia (translates to Picardy Third, a type of musical chord).  Using this song was insurance that anyone who saw it would cry their eyes out.  I’m moved every time I hear it and the climax just kills me – doesn’t matter that I’ve no idea what they’re singing.

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If my fancy new audio player plugin isn’t showing in your browser (I had to download the newest version of Firefox) here’s a link to the song.

As for running, I had a banner month, reached a new mileage high with 285 and today’s LR finished off a 71 mile week, so things are looking good.  ITBS, I scoff at you (though not too hard in case you come back).

Hudson had a 4-mile time trial listed for Friday, but if there’s one running phrase that makes me stick my fingers in my ears and go LALALALALALALA to drown out the thought, it’d be Time Trial.  I simply don’t do them and I’m at peace with that decision.   Something about running as hard as I can, alone, is comparable to sticking bamboo shoots up fingernails, so it ain’t ever gonna happen.

In its place, I’d planned a 4-mile tempo run, but it was so hot on Friday (dewpoint of 74, Heat Index 87) that I bagged it.  I did want to get something LTish in this week though, so I did a steady-stateish/tempoish progression yesterday before the funeral, middle 4 went 7:15, 7:05, 7:04, 7:00.  7 miles total at 7:45.

Then today, I’d planned 15 and went 16, albeit a slow 16 on Forbidden Drive (local trail) with some rain off and on.  Yesterday I was in high heels all day and had more than my share of wine, so I had no inclination to be anything but a turtle today.  It was so gorgeous with a dark sky (I love ominous-looking rainy days) and all that green on the trail that it turned out to be a slice of heaven.  Ended up with an 8:50 avg.

I’ll leave you with my month in review.  The grey text means it was in the plan but I didn’t do it.  The numbers on the far left are the weeks counting down to the marathon, so week 16 starts tomorrow.  Woohoo!

Life is looking up – I had a great night of sleep.  The noisy cardinal disappeared almost a week ago (maybe a neighbor took a BB gun to it) but instead of peace and quiet returning, the house next door is in the midst of a complete renovation, so yesterday I was out on my deck at 7:30 am, yelling at the workers for using a nail gun so early in the !@#$ morning.  I scared the guys pretty good, crazy bed-hair and all, so they stopped for about an hour and this morning they waited till a more reasonable 8am.

On the running front, things are going great.  The IT band is (dare I say it?) normal again, though I feel it’s one of those injuries that once you have it, you’re always open to reinjury, so I take it with a grain of salt.  It ended up lasting 6 weeks exactly, but now that I know what to do about it if it returns, I don’t foresee it being so drawn-out again.

Last week was a nice, fat, undramatic 61 mile week and boy, did that make me happy.  Pacing was slower than usual because it kept being mid-80s by the time I got out and with all that had been going on, I was satisfied to plod through most of them, so my runs averaged 8:51 to 8:08, depending on the day.

Continuing the trend, yesterday was a 7-mile recoveryish run at 8:53 (87 degrees) and today’s 9 averaged 8:24.  I’m just running by feel – haven’t worn my HR monitor in weeks, either.

Here’s what my tentative calendar looks like for the rest of the month.  I’ll probably get a day off in there somewhere, just not sure when.

Except for progression runs starting the 19th, I haven’t marked any quality runs in yet, choosing  to play it by ear since I’m not training yet.  I figure I’ll start with a short tempo this week, then alternate intervals and tempos till August.  I’m still feeling very much in “taking it easy” mode after being in running rehab the last few weeks.  Funny how easy it is to get out of the quality work habit once you’ve let it lapse.

One interesting note is that if I started Hudson at the 20-week mark (instead of doing my own base-building this month), marathon training would have begun this week.  As it is, I have no interest in calling anything “marathon training” 20-weeks out, so I’m ignoring the little numbers to the left of the calendar until August.  Nod to Hudson for the progression runs, though.

Besides that, I’ve been quite industrious these last few days, adding 10 new designs to The Gifted Runner, so check it out if you’re curious.  But ladies, don’t ask me why the pink wicking shirts are showing up as white, I’ve got a tech support email out to Zazzle to fix it.  It’s not my fault, I swear.

I took Monday off, then got back on the road Tues.  Probably should have been recovery pace, but I wasn’t hurting so it wasn’t happening.  I ended up with a 7-miler at 8:12, Wed was 8 at 8:03 then finally yesterday, helped by a killer dewpoint, I was better behaved with an 8.5 @8:49.

Yesterday was also my race hangover.  It was nothing unexpected; that comedown you feel when a big event is over (helped by some PMS, a bit of real life crap and a day of rain) made for one big ball of boohoo.   I also had a brand new set of apres-race dark thoughts that went a little something like this: “how long will I be able to keep this up?” “what if it ends soon?” “I’ll never be as fast as…”  Blah blah blah.

I eventually cheered up last night when I started copying my Marathon schedule from Hudson’s book into my running calendar and after that was done, filled in the blanks for the few months preceding it.   Having some type of schedule was all I needed to start dreaming and planning again.

I had originally thought I’d be doing 70mpw all summer, but some backing off to re-energize will be beneficial, so it looks like I’ll be 60 to 65 from now through June with one quality session a week.  I’ll have some 55 weeks, too, due to the 4 tentative races I have planned: a 5K in 3 weeks and in June there are 3 consecutive race weeks (a 5K, 5-miler then another 5K).  If it’s horribly hot, I’ll skip one or more.  Then July will get me back up to 70 with marathon training beginning the first week of August.

Now, a picture of Kat and I with Bart Yasso, taken at the Expo.

Plus my ugly race photo.  See the racers behind me?  They were in front of me as I turned the curve on the track but I kicked my heart out to pass them.  The annoying thing is I had my photo face on all through that damn kick and figured they’d already snapped the pic by the time I crossed the mat.  I look like an eel.

My Frankensteinian approach to the next couple weeks (taking Hudson’s final two weeks of his 10K plan and supplanting them in my Half training) looks to be quite a lot of fun, though challenging. This week goes like this:

Today I’m finally getting around to Hudson’s signature workout, Hill Sprints. He loves hillwork but those are the easiest workouts for me to bag, partly because my closest hill is an afternoon hangout for miscreants and partly because I’m lazy. The sprints are just tiny 8-second things, but with a promise of stronger muscles, injury prevention and power gained, I can ignore it no longer. So today’s an easy 6-miler with a few of these sprints near the end. Hopefully, the condom count on the road will be down from last summer.

Tomorrow’s speed session looks pretty entertaining: 2miles easy, then 4x2k@10k pace w/3min recoveries, 2 miles cooldown. I was a little nervous when I first saw 4x2k (5 miles of speedwork is as hard it gets), but the fact that it’s 10K pace and not 5K pace is the saving grace. Still, I’m sure I’ll be adequately miserable by the third one.

Tempo fun this week consists of: 2 easy, 2x10min at Half/10K w/2min recoveries, then 8×200 at 3k pace w/200m recoveries, 1 mile easy. Interesting variety there.

Then on Sunday, I’ve got a 15-mile progression run, last 15 minutes “hard” though I’ll likely change it to “moderate” since at this point in the plan it only calls for a 9-mile LR anyway and I think I may just be a tad pooped by the time Sunday rolls around.

Add to this 3 easy runs and 3 pushup challenge days and that covers it. Oh, but I forgot the sitting. I plan on doing lots of sitting all week. It’s a tough workout, but worth it.