December 23rd, 2008
I was bored last night, so I stuck my Spring goal race into this little date calculator to see when I need to start training and wowza! January 11 will be 16 weeks from the Lehigh Valley Half. Time to start thinking about it.
So then I’m looking at all my books, wondering what training plan I want to follow and not getting excited by any. Most of them are shy on the quality work, when I know I can handle two a week and Daniels doesn’t even have a dedicated Half schedule, he says you can use the Marathon one, but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea.
Just as I was making the decision to roll my own, swiping a few workouts from this plan and that, I took a second look at my new book, Brad Hudson’s Run Faster from the 5K to the Marathon, recommended by a few people I respect on the Marathon Training forum.
I had only glanced at the plans, but now that I was giving it my full attention, the more I liked what I saw. Hudson’s plans have quite a bit more work in them than Pfitzinger, Glover and the rest. All the long runs are progression runs, he’s big on hill reps as a strengthener and injury prevention, there’s fartlek sprinkled throughout (which I thought was lame when I first looked at it, but now looks appetizing enough)…
In a nutshell, it has lots of variety, looks like it would bring some substantial rewards speed-wise and most importantly, looks fun!
It’s a cool book in general, he espouses adaptive training; instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, you use what works for you and drop what doesn’t. He also recommends changing your training from season to season to keep the training effect fresh. The focus is in making you an effective, intuitive self-coach.
What I find super attractive in the plan are those progression Long Runs. You know I loved Pfitzinger and appreciated that he got me safely to the start line in October, but it wasn’t much a of a push for me, I became used to putting the brakes on for LRs, avoiding a great opportunity for extra improvement. The way Brad Hudson says “if you can add some quality into your easy runs, why not do it?” makes a lot of sense to me. I’d been under the assumption that easy must be easy, hard must be hard, but Hudson gives you a middle layer, too.
So I’m in! Two and a half weeks of freeform ahead and then the new plan begins.
As for the present, the holidays are about to finally do their thing and tomorrow morning, we’ll be leaving for a couple days. While I’m gone, I may pretend to not have internet access in an attempt to act mentally healthy and be all woodsy-natural, but that’s like trying to keep Amy Winehouse away from the crack pipe, so I’m not confident about it. Especially since we’re bringing a pipe (laptop) with us.
I leave you with a twisted holiday medley from Straight No Chaser. I read about them yesterday on CNN. They formed at Indiana University, disbanded after school, then last year one of them put a 1998 video of themselves on YouTube, that instantly went viral. Now they’ve got a record deal. I love stories like that. Enjoy!
Merry Xmas, Chappy Chanukah and Krazy Kool Kwanzaa to you all!
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Wow, a date calculator website – brilliant. All this time I have been counting backwards with a calendar with my shoes and socks off like a dumbass, this thing could have saved me some time.
I have been hearing more and more about this guys book, guess this is another one I should consider picking up at some point. You have a goal time in mind, or is that kind of a taboo question this early?
Liked the Amy Winehouse remark… I am trying to keep my Internet addiction to a minimum but it is not working. Good luck with the new plan and Happy Holidays!!!
Yup, we’re all eyeing those spring events now. I’m skipping that Massachusetts race till next time, and doing Big Sur instead. It’s a slow course, but awesome: http://www.bsim.org/site3.aspx and this is week one of my 18-week plan already.
I’m going with Daniels again, but I’m modifying it with some hill work and speed stuff.
Progman, glad to make help make calendar counting a little easier for you. Laughing at the thought of you counting toes.
As for my goal time…no taboo, it’s just way too early to tell. I feel like I’m on the cusp of some breakthroughs, my regular pace has migrated in the last few weeks from the 8:50s to 8:30. Once I start doing Hudson’s progression runs and hill repeats, I expect another dive. It’s enough to make me giggle and stare at my logs for an embarrassingly long time.
Christi, internet addiction is sooo bad, but I love it (like any addiction). So glad we don’t live in China, though. They’d have an intervention and send us to rehab, and not the fun one Amy goes to.
Jim, I’ve heard about Big Sur, it looks amazing and worth being slow for.
I was looking at Daniels but all the E’s, I’s, T’s and R’s were annoying me, so I’ll use Hudson for now, then reassess for marathon training this summer, though I’m thinking I’ll be a Hudson girl for all of 2009. Good on you for doctoring Daniels to suit. I expect some major gains from you this year.
Hey Jim, I ran Big Sur and it is beautiful. It’s actually not that bad. Sure, there’s a 2 mile up hill with the potential for some serious wind, but then you run down it.
THe thing to really watch for is the road in Carmel. It’s terrible. It cants so much I ended up running on the yellow line just to try and find something flat.
“… but then you run down it.” Thanks DP.
I’ve been warned about the camber. Apparently the whole road slopes towards the ocean, so there’s no level middle. I’ll just have to do some camber running on my long runs I guess.
yea, and the down is the half way with the piano and all that.
Yea, it all slopes and you really feel it by that point in the race.
I lived in Big Sur for a while so that race is really special to me.
I liked the Hudson/Fitzgerald book, although it’s work to take in and then figure out how to apply the approach to yourself. I’m so lazy that I just decided to pay someone instead. My coach-provided plan has a lot of fast finish runs — basically sticking a tempo run at the end of a long easy run on a regular basis. I can see that this shit works.
But my partner, Jonathan, has used “Run Faster” to plan his base and spring marathon training, while cautiously building back his fitness after a bout with injury. He’s doing the hill sprints and, knock wood, he’s injury free so far.
Good info, Julie. Yeah, a tempo or fast thing stuck at an end of a run makes sense to me – not only for the training push from tempo pace, but also it requires you to hold back so that you can produce at the end, unlike Pfitzinger who would have you hold back 20%-10%, just because. I think I’ll prefer being subtly coerced into doing slower miles because I have to, to finish the workout properly.
Merry Christmas Flo!
Hoping that you and your man have a good one and maybe some new running stuff, huh?
Merry Christmas and Happy Running!
Merry Xmas Dave and Bruce, sorry I didn’t get this in sooner. Hope you had a fun one.