Wednesday, June 25, 2008

a weather reprieve

The running has been going better this week.

I got in 5.5 on Monday morning. I ran a different route, which I think helped my spirits. Even better on Tuesday was the cooler weather -- 57 degrees. I ran 9.3 at under 9 min/mi and a reasonable heart rate (140 I think). I snuck in a run at lunch time, which I've never done before. It was nice to get out of the office and it only took 70 minutes to change, run 40 minutes, shower, grab lunch, and get back to my office. I ran through a nature preserve zig-zagging on paths up and down hills. My garmin record 11 min/mi!

The weather was good again this morning and I got in another 9.3. The pace was about 8:45 although I kept the pace on the steep uphills and touched 159 bpm once or twice. It felt very nice. I was actually itching to run again at lunch, but didn't.

After vacillating and thinking way too much, I've come back to the Rubio plan for no other reason than I'm tired of thinking about it and it roughly matches what I think about marathon training. I've reformatted from the horrible skinny column on the asics aggies site to this using google documents.

Adjusting the dates for my target marathon on 11/29 gives
  • 7/21 - 9/14 - Transition period (8 weeks)
  • 9/15 - 11/9 - Race prep period (8 weeks)
  • 11/10-11/29 (race Sat) - Marathon taper (3 weeks)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Greg, one thing I'd say on this go around is don't try to do everythin on the schedule to the letter (can't quite remember if you were last time, but just saying). For instance, the length of the intervals, the # of intervals--particularly when you are hitting the race specific period.

The Weds. run is important, but depending where you are in your fitness (20, 17, 15 5000m Fitness for example), doing it as progression the day following a workout can be really hard and burn you out. Maybe you don't ever really treat that run as a progression.

Finally, considering you'll be doubling 2 times per week, I'd give serious thought to taking that Thursday as a complete rest day--or if you do jog, run it as 30:00 @ 65% or something. In fact, I'd keep M and SA at a 70% limit as well--perhaps even the LR days on SU's. Remember when Joe's guys are called to 20-24 milers, they're moving at 6-6:30 pace quite often.

The #1 thing Joe drilled into my head in our brief, occasional emails is that you need to be honest how you're recovering--and I wasn't last season and it nailed me.

As always, best of luck. You'll get there.