mankle30
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2017
- Messages
- 342
Hello to all! Welcome to my training journal! After completing the Walt Disney World Marathon on Sunday, January 8, 2017, just a few days after my 40th birthday (you can read my race report here), it's time to set my sights on new goals and new challenges.
I'm posting this training journal mostly to keep myself accountable. I'm actually usually pretty good about getting my training runs in but I want to get things on the record, so to speak, and to document my training.
I'm looking at 2017 as having two training cycles.
Cycle 1: Speed!
Cycle 2: Another marathon!
Thanks to the generous help of DopeyBadger (his training journal is awesome, read it here, but I'm sure you have already), I'm using a custom training program leading up to the Sporting Life 10K in Toronto. It's one of my favourite races that's mostly downhill, starts not too far away from where live (maybe a 10-15 minute drive) and boasts thousands of runners. I won't PB this race (see below) but I'm looking to improve my time significantly over my 2016 race.
Cycle 1 Goals:
1) Lose weight! I come into this training cycle at 218 pounds. For a guy who's about 5'8", that's way too much. Having run the WDW marathon at this weight, I realized how brutal it is on my body. That's why I'm not targeting another marathon right away. I want to be able to focus on eating right (following a lot of DopeyBadger's guidelines and principles) and not having to worry about all the long training runs involved in marathon training.
2) Break 1:00:00. Last year in the Sporting Life 10K, I ran about 1:04 and change.
3) Remain injury free. This is going to be tough. I may already be carrying an injury into the training but it's really hard to tell right now. My ankles (particularly the left one) swelled up a ton about a week after the marathon and my doctor basically prescribed rest and Advil to reduce the swelling. Well, the swelling has gone down after a few days of staying off my feet but there was dull, inconsistent weird pain today while walking (in non-ideal shoes, carrying a 10-15 lb load). Tomorrow I do an easy 3 miles (I mean very easy -- a pace of almost 13:30 per mile) and I'll be monitoring the situation very closely as I start running again.
I'll be using DopeyBadger's Jack Daniels 10K program that has been retrofitted to my paces (much much slower). I also may use one or two 5K races in March and/or April to test my readiness to race and there could be a half marathon the week before the 10K (but I'll do it very slowly) just to keep some long run fitness up before I kick over to marathon training following the 10K.
I'll also be breaking in a brand new pair of New Balance 880v6 that I picked up at a huge discount.
Here's a little bit about my running history.
I've always struggled with my weight. At my heaviest, I was about 235 pounds a year after I finished university. I started running (slowly) and did a lot of weight training to get down to about 185 (pretty muscular) pounds. I kept running, even though it didn't really make up a big part of my cardio training and enjoyed my time in Boston from 2001 to 2003 to run along the Charles River.
It was in Boston that the marathon bug first hit me. I lived on the Boston Marathon route my first year there and was incredibly inspired by watching the runners go by. I decided to run the Boston Marathon someday.
That thought stayed with me as I went back to Toronto but didn't really get much running done in the next couple of years. I started up again, getting in the 3-4 km range when another member of my gym challenged me to run the Sporting Life 10K with her about a month after the conversation. Well, I started training and basically ran the race in just under an hour (in 2007 at the age of 30) and I was hooked!
Wanted a bigger challenge, so I signed up for the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon and that year and completed it in under two hours (1:56:43)! Then, the next year, I put the pedal to the metal and ran the 10K again, PRing in 49:55 while running the full Waterfront Marathon in 3:57:13 in 2008.
Some injuries took hold as I looked to continue my training that winter and, through a move overseas in 2011, and other injuries (like a badly sprained ankle, sustained while running that took months to heal) and I got away from my running.
Since 2012, I've steadily put on weight and decided, when I was running in southern Virginia last winter, near my in-laws' place that, to celebrate my 40th birthday, I would return to the marathon and help get in shape.
This May, I ran the Sporting Life 10k once again, this time in 1:04:35 and finished the Waterfront Half Marathon in 2:27:06 in October. I was looking to run the Disney Marathon in 5:15 but a combination of events put a crimp in my training (which, I've learned, was far too little and inappropriate) but I still gutted out a finish in 5:28:42.
My goal is to get to Boston. I've clearly got a long way to go. The first part of that is to get faster and the best way to do that is to get back to my "fighting" weight below 185 pounds.
Comments are always welcome!
I'm posting this training journal mostly to keep myself accountable. I'm actually usually pretty good about getting my training runs in but I want to get things on the record, so to speak, and to document my training.
I'm looking at 2017 as having two training cycles.
Cycle 1: Speed!
Cycle 2: Another marathon!
Thanks to the generous help of DopeyBadger (his training journal is awesome, read it here, but I'm sure you have already), I'm using a custom training program leading up to the Sporting Life 10K in Toronto. It's one of my favourite races that's mostly downhill, starts not too far away from where live (maybe a 10-15 minute drive) and boasts thousands of runners. I won't PB this race (see below) but I'm looking to improve my time significantly over my 2016 race.
Cycle 1 Goals:
1) Lose weight! I come into this training cycle at 218 pounds. For a guy who's about 5'8", that's way too much. Having run the WDW marathon at this weight, I realized how brutal it is on my body. That's why I'm not targeting another marathon right away. I want to be able to focus on eating right (following a lot of DopeyBadger's guidelines and principles) and not having to worry about all the long training runs involved in marathon training.
2) Break 1:00:00. Last year in the Sporting Life 10K, I ran about 1:04 and change.
3) Remain injury free. This is going to be tough. I may already be carrying an injury into the training but it's really hard to tell right now. My ankles (particularly the left one) swelled up a ton about a week after the marathon and my doctor basically prescribed rest and Advil to reduce the swelling. Well, the swelling has gone down after a few days of staying off my feet but there was dull, inconsistent weird pain today while walking (in non-ideal shoes, carrying a 10-15 lb load). Tomorrow I do an easy 3 miles (I mean very easy -- a pace of almost 13:30 per mile) and I'll be monitoring the situation very closely as I start running again.
I'll be using DopeyBadger's Jack Daniels 10K program that has been retrofitted to my paces (much much slower). I also may use one or two 5K races in March and/or April to test my readiness to race and there could be a half marathon the week before the 10K (but I'll do it very slowly) just to keep some long run fitness up before I kick over to marathon training following the 10K.
I'll also be breaking in a brand new pair of New Balance 880v6 that I picked up at a huge discount.
Here's a little bit about my running history.
I've always struggled with my weight. At my heaviest, I was about 235 pounds a year after I finished university. I started running (slowly) and did a lot of weight training to get down to about 185 (pretty muscular) pounds. I kept running, even though it didn't really make up a big part of my cardio training and enjoyed my time in Boston from 2001 to 2003 to run along the Charles River.
It was in Boston that the marathon bug first hit me. I lived on the Boston Marathon route my first year there and was incredibly inspired by watching the runners go by. I decided to run the Boston Marathon someday.
That thought stayed with me as I went back to Toronto but didn't really get much running done in the next couple of years. I started up again, getting in the 3-4 km range when another member of my gym challenged me to run the Sporting Life 10K with her about a month after the conversation. Well, I started training and basically ran the race in just under an hour (in 2007 at the age of 30) and I was hooked!
Wanted a bigger challenge, so I signed up for the Toronto Waterfront Half Marathon and that year and completed it in under two hours (1:56:43)! Then, the next year, I put the pedal to the metal and ran the 10K again, PRing in 49:55 while running the full Waterfront Marathon in 3:57:13 in 2008.
Some injuries took hold as I looked to continue my training that winter and, through a move overseas in 2011, and other injuries (like a badly sprained ankle, sustained while running that took months to heal) and I got away from my running.
Since 2012, I've steadily put on weight and decided, when I was running in southern Virginia last winter, near my in-laws' place that, to celebrate my 40th birthday, I would return to the marathon and help get in shape.
This May, I ran the Sporting Life 10k once again, this time in 1:04:35 and finished the Waterfront Half Marathon in 2:27:06 in October. I was looking to run the Disney Marathon in 5:15 but a combination of events put a crimp in my training (which, I've learned, was far too little and inappropriate) but I still gutted out a finish in 5:28:42.
My goal is to get to Boston. I've clearly got a long way to go. The first part of that is to get faster and the best way to do that is to get back to my "fighting" weight below 185 pounds.
Comments are always welcome!