A New Direction

The frustration level continued to grow over the weekend, as this weather just isn't conducive to good training. It's seems that every day is either freezing temps, snowing, or both. What makes it so frustrating, is that right now, I don't really have a plan. I know I want to run a marathon in late April, but I wasn't really focusing my training. I basically had the philosophy that I would try and run as many miles as possible until then. However, when the weather is like that, running tons of miles just isn't all that fun. So finally on Sunday night, I decided to sit and see what I could do about it.

I realized that I was exactly 10 weeks out from my goal spring marathon. I then went and looked at an old book that I recently found called "The Self-Coached Runner." In it they have some pretty aggressive training programs for distances from the 5K up to the marathon. It is heavy on speedwork and probably a little lighter than I'm used to on the mileage end. I wanted to give it a try at some point, so I figured now would probably be as good a time as any to give it a shot. If I tank in my spring marathon, at least I'll know that this kind of training isn't for me.

So with that, I set off on the prescribed workout for Monday which was 10 X 400 @ 76 seconds each. I haven't done quarters in years, so I had no idea if my legs would be able to handle it, but for the most part, it went pretty good. Since we got another dusting of snow, it made doing these outside nearly impossible, so I did them on the treadmill, set at 11.8MPH and the incline at 1%. Just to keep things simple, I did a .15 mile recovery interval between each rep with the speed varying from 7-8MPH, depending on how I was feeling. With warmup and cooldown the run was 8 miles and I left feeling pretty good.

The next day I wasn't sure how I was going to be feeling since I haven't run that fast in a workout in a long time. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good, which was a good thing considering what the schedule held for today. "12 Miles of easy running, incorporating 10 miles in 60:00." Hmmm. Talk about a contradiction. Easy running and 10 miles in 60 minutes certainly don't go together. Due to a time crunch, I didn't have time to fit in all 12 miles, so I opted for 10 miles of "easy running" incorporating 9 miles in 54:00. Again this was done on the treadmill with the incline at 1% and again, I felt surprisingly good for this run. I say it was suprising because I usually have a hard time maintaining 6 min/mile pace on the treadmill, mostly due to the sheer boredom of it all (at least that's what I tell myself).

Afterwards I could feel that there was going to be some soreness in my quads from the back to back tough workouts, but nothing too bad. Today was an easy day and I needed it. I did 9 miles right around a 7 minute pace. It felt good to do something nice and slow today after the first two tough days this week. The next two days call for a 17 mile run and then mile repeats the following day. Not much of a break for the weary there. I have no idea if I'll hold up under the demands of this schedule, but it's time to see if I can. As they say, No Risk, No Reward.