Adjusting My Speed

When I created my marathon training plan a little over a month ago, I was pretty conservative when it came to speed workouts.

Even though I had a specific time goal in mind at the beginning of the year, I have since adjusted that goal due to the fact that I have not seen as much improvement as I thought I would over the summer. My current goal for the Philadelphia Marathon is just to get through it. As I get closer to race day I will re-evaluate my fitness and training and then possibly set a time goal.

I have recently seen some improvement. I finally got in tune with my body and I am training properly and feeling good. I am not running too much and not skipping runs. I have put in some quality miles that feel good. Even though my improvement has not been off the charts, the improvement is there and I am feeling better about my running.

So now I look at my training program and feel as though my speed workouts are too easy. I have decided to be a little more aggressive and get some hard workouts in there. I am still a little nervous about going too hard. I will be approaching these workouts with enough caution so that I do not injure myself, but smart enough to know when I can go harder.

I have done a few speed workouts over the last month and a half. I have done some fartleks, an easy run with some sprints mixed in. I have done 5x800 which I plan to build up to 10x800 in order to measure my fitness and possibly predict my marathon pace. Finally, I turned an easy day into 2x10:00 minutes with a target pace around 9:30. That one I could have done more than 2 intervals, but it was supposed to be an easy day and I wanted to keep it semi easy.

These workouts were not always comfortable, but they felt good. If that makes any sense. When I finished the workouts I felt like I accomplished something. Even though I was sore, it was a good sore, and I did not have any pains that worried me.

I feel like my body is becoming much more adapted to running, and now I can work toward improvement a little better than I have been.

800's And So Much More

It has been so long since I have blogged, and I have so much to talk about... I guess I will load up on posts this weekend rather than talk about everything in one long post.

This past Wednesday was my first official week of speed work for my marathon training. I decided to start my speed work with Yasso 800's for a couple of reasons. I am using the 800's more as a measure of improvement throughout the training and then, about three weeks out from the marathon, as a predictor of my finish time.

I did 5x800 with 400 recovery. I am lucky enough to have a high school track within cycling distance that is open to the public during off hours. I used the bike ride there as part of my warm up and felt good.

Here are the times for those five intervals:

4:22
4:27
4:47
4:41
4:33

Before you say anything, I know... I am slow. But I am satisfied with those times for my first time out. I did the first one a bit too fast, and died out later on, but I now have a point of reference to work from.

Along with other speed work, I have three more 800's planned during my marathon training. I will build up to 10x800 and that final workout will tell me how much I have improved and how prepared I am for the marathon. According to the great Bart Yasso, the average time for that 10x800 will be close to my finish time in the marathon.

So if you take those five intervals I did it looks like I should be able to finish the marathon in about 4:34. Hopefully with my training I make some progress to better that time a bit.

So my training is still going good. My mileage is steadily increasing and I feel good. I am getting good results from my quality runs and look forward to all that is ahead. I'll be back this weekend to talk more about everything running, and some that is not.

14 Weeks To Philly - Training Going Well

Today I finished my second week of training and it is now fourteen weeks to the Philadelphia Marathon. While on my run this morning I was thinking about my training plan, and decided I need to write about how it is going.... because it is going great!

Including this current plan, I have started three official training plans. The C25K program, The Broad Street Run training program and of course this Philadelphia Marathon training plan. Besides the one I am doing now for the marathon I have finished none.

Why could that be?

Well the C25K program was obviously my first, and was intended to get me started with running. It is a good program and I recommend it to everyone wanting to start. I did not stop the program for any reason related to the actual program, but reasons completely my fault.

I had bad running shoes which did not help my feet and legs, and I ran too fast which also did not help my feet and legs and breathing. I developed very bad shin splints and was discouraged pretty quickly. I stopped running altogether after almost three weeks of C25K.

Luckily I started running again a few months after that, because late last year I decided to run the Philadelphia Broad Street Run. I snagged a plan off of Runners World and started training for that. Life got in the way of that one and I abandoned the plan because my schedule was interfering with it. Luckily I was still able to run some and did finish the Broad Street Run, and ran it pretty well.

So I decided to develop my own training plan for the Philadelphia Marathon. I like the 16 week plans. Although I would like to run five or six days a week, my body can really only handle three days a week right now. I have also found that running by time rather than distance works better for me right now.

So I spent a couple nights tweaking a plan that looks good for me. All my runs, except for a few Yasso 800's, are scheduled by time. Even speed workouts. This is the first time creating a plan as well as the first time running a marathon, so I am nervous that I may not know what I am doing... but so far everything is going well. We will know for sure in fourteen more weeks.

I had a bad run the other day, because of a long day at work and the heat, but every other run has been great. I am feeling good. My legs feel great. I am learning what my body can do and how to avoid injury. I am looking forward to speed work, and the excitement of the marathon keeps building and building.

I am praying that it is God's will for me to run this marathon. I want to stay healthy and injury free and run a good run.

I am feeling good!

Training By Time

I have only been running a short time, but ever since I started I have read many times over that it is best for beginners to run by time rather than distance. It is beneficial in different ways to run for thirty minutes rather than run for, say, three miles.

It has taken me an entire year to heed that advice.

A couple of weeks ago, when coming back from a slight foot injury, I decided to run by time and not worry about distance at all. I have not had a bad run since then. (knock on wood)

There are a couple of different things, both mental and physical, that make training by time better for me. First of all the body does not know what one mile or one kilometer is, but it does know what thirty minutes or an hour is. Time is more realistic to the body, and the body knows the difference between minutes rather than miles.

Another aspect for me is mental. Twenty minutes will always be twenty minutes, but one mile can be anywhere from eight minutes to eleven minutes for me. As long as I keep my pace the way it needs to be for that particular run, my mind is in it better because I know how much longer I am running for.

Another thing that I tend to do is run fast to get that first mile done with, or speed up to finish that last mile. This can mess up my workout and I will completely fail to reach my goal for that run. Now if I focus on time, then it does not matter how fast I run, that last five minutes will always be five minutes.

One of my problems however, is that I am a stat whore. I love compiling numbers and measuring the distance I run each week and month. No problem there, I can always plan my runs by time and log them by mileage.

Problem solved.

So the training plan I have written up for my first marathon starts next week. Every run is by time rather than distance, even the speed workouts. The only workouts where I am measuring my runs by distance are the Yasso 800's.

I will be doing five of them starting at 6x800 and working up to 10x800 a few weeks before the marathon. I am interested in seeing how well that will measure preparedness for the marathon.

Speed Work

Today I had a day off work. So the plan was to get up early and go to the track for some speed work. Besides some speed play here and there, I have never really done organized speed work. So today was the day.

When the alarm went off, I was cold and tired and achy. So I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. My kids woke me up about an hour and a half later and after a little moving around I knew that I needed to get out and run as soon as possible or else it would not happen at all.

I have been wanting to find my mile time, so the plan was to do a time trial and find that. Then I wanted to do three or four Yasso 800's just to see where my fitness is and have something to measure improvement as I get closer to the marathon.

I did not feel like driving to the track so I ran in the neighborhood. I still planned to do the mile but instead of 800's I would do three half mile intervals.

I warmed up as I was making my way to a good street to run on. I got to the corner and I was off. I ran hard and made an effort not to look at my Garmin at all. I just focused on the run and tried to keep my form good. It seemed to take a long time to finish this mile. When my watch finally beeped I was all too happy to slow down.

My mile time was 8:12.

Not incredibly fast, but I remember the very first time I tried to "run" a mile it took me about fifteen minutes and I could not even run the whole thing. In fact I think I walked more than half of it at the time.

So time for intervals. I decided to change it up and do four quarter mile intervals with quarter mile recoveries. I realized after the fact that I would do better with shorter recoveries, but live and learn.

Here are the interval times for those:

2:16
2:10
2:15
2:08

For some reason, I think I could have done them a little harder. I do not want to push myself into an injury, so I do not plan on doing speed work every week until I actually start my marathon training program.

But I do enjoy speed work... at least I do as of right now. That will probably change when I am pushing myself even more. I did a total of four miles this morning and mentally is was so much easier than running four miles at an easy pace because it was mixed up so much.

It feels good!