Ok Goofy Heroes, Battle Plans

[windwalker]

How the heck does a sane person train for the Goofy Challange?

I'm a racewalker, but the training I do is exactly like a runner would train. I have kinda started thinking about the whole concept and come up with a beginning plan to work with. The Wild Gerbil and I will fine tune it as we go along.

The core to our training will be a 10 mile walk on Monday and a progressively longer walk on Tuesday untill we get the Tuesday run up to 20 miles. Then do the back to back Monday 10 and Tuesday 20 every third week.

What have the rest of you Goofy Champions done to make it through the Challange, please share.

Dave

 

[wfloyd]

Starting around the middle of September, I started following Galloway's plan. It had 2 short runs and one long run a week. Every other week, I would move a short run to Friday and make it half the distance I was planning on for Saturday. This would give me the back to back runs to get ready for Goofy. I think the highest mileages I did were 12/23.

It seemed to work out pretty good for me especially since I had every other Friday off from work so I could go out and do this.

Bill

 

[Tiger Lily 03]

GREAT question to pose in a separate thread.

There was mention of some training plans on the weekly walker/runner thread page 8 of Jan 21. Some of these are:

Goofy training plans discussion They start at the bottome of the page. There may be additional further in the thread.

Cecilia - I used the furman first (sp?) 16 week program for goofy 2 years ago. It was my first marathon (out of 4 and an ultra not counting goofy) and i found it to be the easiest. I modified their program and changed my mid week tempo run to make it 1/2 the distance of my LR and i did it the day b/4 the LR. i ended up only doing 3 back to backs. I do a lot of endurance racing (adventure racing for up to 24 hours continuous), so I think that helped make goofy seem not so overwhelming. Also, i chose that program specifically b/c it only had 3 day/week running and I needed the others to work on paddling and mt. biking. I even substutited a few long runs for a 100 mile bike ride and 2 adventure races which were 9-12 hrs each. I ended up doing enough running during the race to count is as my run that week anyway. I don't know if that helps or not. The first year they did goofy, they interviewed hal higdon and he said his intermediate marathon program was a good fit for the event. That was way too long, but i hope it helps! Congrats on signing up and good luck w/ your training.

Goofy training plans- I used the intermediate 1 level plan on hal higdon's website for the run portion mileage to get three runs per week and then for the last 7 weeks I was also doing the winter maintenance bike plan off beginnertriathlete.com. So one sample week, I rode M, W, Th, S, S and ran T, Th, 20" transition run on Sat and long Sun. The Sat rides where in the vicinity of 3-3.5 hours. My highest running mileage week only topped out at 35 miles. I didn't bother doing any back to back long runs at all.

So how did this work for me? Great. Ran easy but not super slow on Sat and felt great on Sun. Could have done another long run on Mon and never hurt at all. Caveat to my unusual Goofy approach- I train to run a marathon tired as a matter of principle since most of my marathons(including the next 2) come after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike. I've now done 6 marathons and 3 have come at the tail end of an Ironman race and one was Goofy 2007 so...the biggest reason I posted this was to just give another perspective on how it can be done. MelR didn't mention it but I know she did alot of cross training especially on the bike too.

My coach says his goal is to get it so I actually like to run since doing the marathon during Goofy w/ Kevin and Howard was only the second time I ever actually described a running race as 'fun.' The other time was a half marathon I entered on a whim because a friend decided 5 days before the race she wanted to do her first half. So we ran 13.1 miles in the rain up some nasty hills(Big Lake 2006 for the NH peeps) at a pace for me that caused her to tell me to shut up about mile 11. I was allowed to talk again once we hit mile 12 so apparently I'm only happy running when I'm socializing. Luckily we've got a great WISH group that will be happy to help me out with that I'm sure

Welcome to all the new people. We've got a friendly and helpful group here with a wide range of experiences in all manner of things.

Cecilia--Oh, I knew there was something I forgot to post. Goofy training. I used Hal Higdon's Intermediate 1 plan and modified it slightly. I changed the shorter LR on Saturdays to be approx half of the LR on Sundays. Most of his Intermediate plan does this already, but as you get near the 20 milers, he tapers back a bit on the shorter LR. I also changed the final "big week" to end with 11 Saturday and 22 on Sunday. My longest weekly mileage was around 48 or so.
It seemed to work well for me, although I was pretty tired near the end of the marathon on Sunday (I'm thinking that had more to do with the heat, though). I think the most important thing was to get my body used to the short recovery time it had between the Saturday and Sunday LRs. I tried to stretch and take an ice bath after every Saturday run, which seemed to help with overall soreness on Sunday mornings. And near the peak weeks, I had pasta on Friday night, some protein and carbs on Saturday after the first shorter LR, and pasta yet again on Saturday night. After that spell in Nov and Dec, Krista said we are never going to frequent Italian restaurants again.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you want to see the plan I ended up with and I can email/PM it to you.

Steve

Cecilia, I used my MfM training and did what Christa had posted up from the tricharlotte.com site her coach posted a while back. Follow whatever program you use to train during the week. Modify your LR weekends starting with mile 12 LRs by doing half of that the previous day. It worked fine for the last 2 Goofy events for me. (rest days day previous and day after)

I do have insight to add since I trained slightly different the 2 times I've done the event. First was more involved with cross training. This last time I had less time and left off a lot of XT. I feel XT is very important and I recommend that.

 

[skfulkers]

Starting around the middle of September, I started following Galloway's plan. It had 2 short runs and one long run a week. Every other week, I would move a short run to Friday and make it half the distance I was planning on for Saturday. This would give me the back to back runs to get ready for Goofy. I think the highest mileages I did were 12/23.

It seemed to work out pretty good for me especially since I had every other Friday off from work so I could go out and do this.

Bill

Dave--I did basically what Bill mentioned above. I used Hal Higdon's intermediate 1 plan, which has a semi-long run the day before the real long run. I tweaked it slightly to have the last big week before the taper end with an 11 miler followed by a 22 miler.
Your plan sounds good, just be careful you don't do too much. Starting out with 10 milers for the "short long run" from the beginning is pretty ambitious, and kudos to you if you can do it. Just make sure to listen to your body. I think that was the single best thing I did during training last year. The back to back long runs get tiring, so make sure to take it easier on the shorter "maintenance" runs during the mid-week. If my legs were tired midweek, I would sometimes cross train instead of doing a 4 or 5 miler.

Hope this helps.

Steve

 

[KeenHo]

For me, I trained three weeks before the events. I trained about every third day doing runs of about 6 to 8 miles. My LR was 13.8 miles about a week before the races. Then a slow, lazy taper to the Marathon Weekend.

Obviously, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone, but it worked for me.



Howard