Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Cox Providence Marathon Training

Holy cannoli batman! Only 9 weeks before I run the Providence Marathon! It's just dawning on me that's really not far away...

Many moons ago, I wrote a post on lessons learned from my last disaster of marathon, which occurred a few months before I got pregnant in 2009. (Note: I can't seem to locate the post due to poor tagging. Therefore, I've learned yet another lesson; tag your posts appropriately.) Anyway, during that last training cycle I ran entirely too hard, wound up sick and injured, blah, blah blah. I came to the conclusion, that a crazy person such as myself, needs a shorter training cycle. This doesn't really mean that I haven't been training, but I tell myself I'm not training. Yes, I can be a bit strange, but now we're off topic.

For the Providence marathon, I decided that the week leading up to the half marathon would mark my first week of official marathon training. My first long run was the half marathon plus warm up and cool down, which gave me 17 miles for the day. So what does the rest of my plan entail? I'm so glad you asked!

  • I'll run a long run every other week. This gives me 4 long runs that should be 20 plus miles each. I don't have specific distances for the long runs planned. I'm going to run for time (rather than distance), and aim to keep my heart rate in my easy zone. I plan to run 3 hours, 3:20, 3:20, and then back down to 3 hours. I'm hoping this will keep my craziness in check.
  • Also, rather than worrying about running fast all the time, I'd like to try to keep my weekly mileage higher (between 48 - 62 miles).
  • There will be 1 tempo run every week (or every other week depending on how my legs feel) between 6-8 miles.
  • There will be 1-2 marathon pace runs every week between 6-10 miles.
  • Everything else will be easy. I'll just be aiming to get in the miles. I know some people hate this philosophy, but when I was in college we had two very hard workouts a week and all other runs were just about getting in the miles, not about pace. I was a lot faster then than I am now, so maybe there's something to that...
  • The running calculators claim I can run a 3:22, which is based on my 1:36 half from last week. I plan to train for a 3:30. I'm hoping that this might help prevent injuries, and set me up to run a 3:35 so that I can run Boston on my birthday! Because I so want to run Boston on my birthday! Deep breath...I just got overly excited there for a second...
How long are your marathon training plans? Do you follow specific plans or do you make up your own?

Marathon Training Week 1 (2/14 - 2/20)
Total Miles: 50
Total Time: 6:40
Average Pace: 8:00 min/mile

Marathon Training Week 2 (2/21 - 2/27)
Total Miles: 50.25
Total Time: 7:15
Average Pace: 8:39 min/mile

4 comments:

Karen said...

Your training plan looks great! I think I have the same problem with over-training myself.

I usually loosely base my marathon plan from Hal Higdon's, making my long runs longer so I can run more than just a couple 20's. My most recent plan is following HH's Novice 2 for the short and mid length runs and then alternating 12-16-20 each week for until March 7. And I think it's too much for me, so I've scaled it back a little bit by slowing my runs down a little.

Then I go 12-20-12-20 until I taper for the race. I have a tune-up half marathon this upcoming weekend, so we'll know for sure if I'm over-trained or not. :)

Jacqueline said...

I never follow a plan ... I write down a bunch, read a bunch, plug in my paces for Pfitz a bunch ... and then go do whatever I want. For me, a similar plan to what you are doing has worked best -- higher mileage, more easy miles, and not so much "leaving my race" on my training run. I tend to get overconfident and start hauling ass on every run, just because I can, and then hurt myself.

I think the higher mileage/easier running plan is a solid one. Good luck!

Lindsay said...

your plan sounds good to me! i usually need more structure - but that just means "tuesdays = tempo runs" or something. i used to need more than that, but i haven't been too successful with a strict schedule in quite awhile so now i just aim for 1 tempo/hard run per week and 1 long run and then fill in the rest with miles to get me to my target weekly mileage.

i just use 'paint' to draw. haha. nothing fancy... that's why they look like a 5 yr old drew them. :)

also i think when you are in the "edit post" view where all your posts are in a list you can type in the box at the top and it will search for posts with that word. worth a shot i guess.

Running and living said...

Yes, this should work wonders for you! You ahve the speed, you need the endurance. May want to add a couple of pace miles at the end of your long runs later on, but for now this seems perfect! Yay!