Wednesday, February 27, 2013

3 Weeks to the Marathon!


Alright guys, I’m running a marathon in less than 3 weeks. That’s 18 days, approximately 75 training miles, 4 hours in the pool, and Lord knows how much time on the foam roller, to be exact.

Me at the Backyard Burn 10-Mile Trail Race.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m on what I call a marathoner lite program. I didn’t even start training until mid-January thanks to some injury nonsense. In normal marathoning there are phases that build endurance, strength, then speed…but Coach George and I pretty much combined all of those into one 7-week time period.

Though that sounds like a horrific idea, I actually think it will be ok – I’d rather be a little undertrained (“well-rested” ha), than overtrained (exhausted and injured).

Back in the day (i.e. college), I was a not-very-good-but-meh-ok 1500m/3K/5K runner. I love track work, fast mileage, and just generally beating myself up all the time…BUT in the interest of this marathon actually happening, my running/workouts have changed a lot.

Here's how things are different:

  • Now I don’t do track workouts at all. Two days a week my “workouts” are tempo runs: 2x2 miles, or 1x2 1x1 mile, or 1x3 1x1 mile, or 1x3 miles, or 1x4 miles. 
  • My weekly mileage isn’t HIGH, but it’s high enough for me. So far it’s looked like: 46, 47, 40, 52. 
  • I take at least one day completely off per week (except last week whoops!). 
  • I pool at least one day per week.
  • I spend some of every work day sitting on ice, and some of my at-home TV time with my foot in a bucket of ice water (totally normal...and always fun times).
  • If I’m tired, I postpone the workout. (Ok there is some outside influence going on here…normally I just do what I’m told when I’m told, but my running friend is on the Don’t Torture Yourself train and I’m doing my best to stay on board.)
  • I stretch and foam roll a lot. And do my strengthening stuff from Dr. John.

I guess technically I’ve now entered into the tapering portion of my marathon plan, though I feel like I just got started running. I’ve done two 16-milers and two over-20-milers …and, well, that’s all I had time for! I suppose that’s one nice thing about an abbreviated training time-period: it’s enough to get tired, but really not enough time to get tired of training.


And as to the success of my own personal program…I’ll let you know on March 16!