Running Renaissance: One Skip Ahead of my Doom

[GollyGadget]

What's the time limit on Mondays? Could you do the majority of the long runs on Mondays, speed days on Wed, off on Thurs, Tempo on Friday?

I only have time for the long run on Saturday or Sunday. The problem is that most weekdays I'll have a 90 min max except for those that are company holidays. Friday became a good swap day since I'll have Friday off on weeks 10, 12, 16 and 17. I'll also have Thursday off on weeks 12 and 17 and this time limit only really becomes a problem in week 12 so maybe sticking to the prescribed days is better.

Previously, I was trying to keep Thursday off so it could be my commute into the office day but some things happened at work today and that's no longer a priority.

n your case, the speed paces suggested seem to be between 5k and 10k pace. According to the chart:

23:30 5k fitness = 7:33 min/mile
49:50 10k fitness = 8:01 min/mile
Speed pace suggestion = 7:40 min/mile

How interesting! I must admit that I didn't pay much attention to those specific speed workout charts. Instead I was looking at the training paces table which has all of the paces together. For a 3:50 goal, it has 7:43 and 8:03 as the speed paces. Additionally there's a paragraph titled "training intensity chart" which states to use your actual 5K & 10K times if you have recent races instead of the chart. Sounds like as long as I stay in that 7:36-7:55 range, I should be okay.

Gosh, I really didn't expect it to be this confusing. Maybe next time, I'll just ask you for a plan .

 

[lookingforsunshine]

Way to go!!!! I’m so proud of you! I believe your watch & in your PR.

 

[GollyGadget]

Way to go!!!! I’m so proud of you! I believe your watch & in your PR.

Thanks!

 

[HangWithMerida]

It’s funny about your Garmin fastest mile. Mine has does that fastest mile PR on about half of my runs for several months now. It’s not like the time is even faster each day, it bounces up and down.

 

[lookingforsunshine]

Mine has does that fastest mile PR on about half of my runs for several months now.

Mine was doing this too. I messed with something in the PR settings and it finally stopped… I think enabled the 1K tracker? It made no sense but did the trick.

 

[GollyGadget]

It’s funny about your Garmin fastest mile. Mine has does that fastest mile PR on about half of my runs for several months now. It’s not like the time is even faster each day, it bounces up and down.

Mine was doing this too. I messed with something in the PR settings and it finally stopped… I think enabled the 1K tracker? It made no sense but did the trick.

Mine has done it a few times the last few months but not enough to be annoying. It's mostly just funny because it's always on my easy runs so have obviously run faster miles.

 

[GollyGadget]

WDW Marathon Training - Week 1/15

I’ve been anticipating this training for a while now. Even still, I found myself stressing about all sorts of aspects of the training this week. How can I fit it into my schedule? What pacing should I use? How will I ever carry that much fuel or water?

The plan is to follow Hanson’s beginner marathon plan. There are a few weeks where I need to make some tweaks but I should be able to follow the plan for the most part. The biggest difference will be that the book is an 18 week plan and I only have 15. This would be concerning except that the first 5 weeks are base building easy runs and the 3.5 weeks that I “missed" were pretty low mileage.

Picking appropriate pacing seemed like a relatively straightforward activity but I still spent an inordinate amount of time figuring it out. The book has a race equivalency chart and another chart for pacing so it should be black and white. My race performances this year, indicated a <3:49 marathon time per the equivalency chart. For some reason the pacing chart doesn't match the equivalency chart so I was "forced" to choose between 3:45 and 3:50. I know the risks of overtraining if I pick something too aggressive, but my current race paces are much closer to 3:45 than 3:50. The marathon scares me too much to go with 3:45 so I eventually decided to just split the difference and base my paces on a 3:47 finish. Plus, 7s are lucky in my house.

The most ironic part of all of this is that it doesn't really even matter this week. Everything is easy pacing . And, in all honesty, I'll be happy with a sub 4 so any extra minutes are just icing on the cake.

Scheduled
Monday - off
Tuesday - off
Wednesday - Easy 3
Thursday - Easy 3
Friday - off
Saturday - Easy 5
Sunday - Easy 5

Completed
Monday - off
Tuesday - off - I had a really stressful day at work and nearly went for a run to blow off some steam but decided I better stick to the schedule. This was my last day of recovery following the 10K the previous Saturday.
Wednesday - Easy 3 - It's been a long time since I've had a proper "runch" and it felt so good to be back. I had to move my runs to the am for summer and now I hope that it stays fall forever.
Thursday - Easy 3 - another successful runch. I do my best thinking when I'm running and this was really good prep for my meeting with my boss about the Tuesday events.
Friday - off - no running but I did ride my bike 3 miles . I'm not really counting that as exercise, that's just how far the roundtrip is to the biergarten which was the perfekt way to end the stressful work week.

Saturday - Easy 5 - I waited too long to get this run done so it was a bit warm but nothing too bad.
Sunday - Easy 5 - I've been running without music a lot lately and did again for this run. It was so nice that I'm not sure why I ever listen to music? It allowed me to really focus on my cadence and my posture. I was pretty tired by the end of this run but my pacing and hr were still in range.

So that's it, week 1 done . I'd like to think that means I'm 6% completed with my plan but it's only 2% of the mileage . It's going to be an interesting fall.

Happy running!

 

[striker1064]

Oh I just finished reading Hanson's book! I love how easy it is to use a plan, and it even does a good job explaining how to change it for your own purposes if need be.

 

[GollyGadget]

Oh I just finished reading Hanson's book! I love how easy it is to use a plan, and it even does a good job explaining how to change it for your own purposes if need be.

I've followed this plan one other time and it worked out really well. I just looked back at my training log from that year and I definitely took a lot of liberties in adjusting the plan so hoping to stick closer to the book this time around

 

[lookingforsunshine]

Biking AND doing a run without music in the same week!? There’s still hope to turn you into a triathlete…

 

[GollyGadget]

Biking AND doing a run without music in the same week!? There’s still hope to turn you into a triathlete…

I'll never say never but definitely not in the foreseeable future. I've never really enjoyed swimming so unless something happens and I'm forced to spend time in the pool, this will be a hard pass. Plus, not really interested in buying a new bike that's meant for racing.

 

[SheHulk]

So that's it, week 1 done . I'd like to think that means I'm 6% completed with my plan but it's only 2% of the mileage . It's going to be an interesting fall.

haha definitely *not* trying to be a Negative Nancy, but those training cycles when I'm already calculating percent done in both weeks and miles, in week 1, have not been the easiest training cycles mentally But I've definitely been there. Hope you glide through it!

 

[GollyGadget]

haha definitely *not* trying to be a Negative Nancy, but those training cycles when I'm already calculating percent done in both weeks and miles, in week 1, have not been the easiest training cycles mentally But I've definitely been there. Hope you glide through it!

Ooof. I hope it's not one of those cycles. I was just brainstorming the best way to measure progress. Weeks is a lot simpler but I'm not sure it makes the most sense. Maybe simpler is better though

 

[HangWithMerida]

I am using the Hanson’s beginner marathon plan too. I have actually been on it for a few weeks. I have some duplicated weeks built in around holidays and such to allow for some cushion. I’m glad to hear you used it before and liked it enough to come back for round 2.

 

[GollyGadget]

I am using the Hanson’s beginner marathon plan too. I have actually been on it for a few weeks. I have some duplicated weeks built in around holidays and such to allow for some cushion. I’m glad to hear you used it before and liked it enough to come back for round 2.

Their methodology fits best with my lifestyle. I could easily run everyday but finding a 4 hour block on a Sunday to go running is much more difficult. At my current fitness, the long run of 16 miles works a lot better for me.

This will only be my 3rd marathon so I'm far from an expert. I didn't do a great job at sticking to the training last time, but I did enough to complete a marathon with a realistic goal and feel good afterwards. That is way more than I can say about my other marathon so I'm sticking with what works and planning to improve on the execution side.

I'm happy to have you along for the ride! It will be fun to compare notes on how things are going. Currently, I'm freaking out about the increase in mileage next week (24 to 39) but I'm sure it will be fine... Okay, maybe I'm still trying to convince myself of that. It doesn't help that there's a little blurb in the book pointing out the increase and how you can adapt the plan to lessen the change.

 

[HangWithMerida]

Yeah, there have been some weeks where the mileage uptick is definitely noticeable! The week I am on now is about 40 miles and is at the end of the speed section. I’m duplicating portions of this week because we are out of town for a music festival and a 10 mile long run then being on my feet all day at the festival sounded like a terrible idea. I’ll do this week again with its long run then move on to the next section where it looks like I’ll be at 47-ish miles. On paper that doesn’t sound like a big jump but it’s basically an entire extra run worth of mileage increase. I am feeling the cumulative fatigue! But I feel like I’ll be prepared with this plan. It’s a lot of running and I‘m able to do it and work and life stuff so when I’m just running, this mileage won’t be so tiring. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

 

[DopeyBadger]

I've done a Hansons variant plan 8 times out of my 16 marathons. Those 8 marathons are my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 11th fastest times. That includes two Dopeys and a 3/4 Dopey (HM cancelled year).

 

[GollyGadget]

I was reading through my old entries today trying to figure out when/why my training didn't go as planned last time so I could glean any lessons and avoid falling into the same pitfalls. Honestly, and this is a tough pill to swallow, I think I just didn't make running my priority. I made non-running decisions that made it difficult to stick to the plan. Most of this occurred early in the plan which snowballed into me not being able to complete the workouts at the prescribed paces later on and ultimately I had to adjust my pace goals. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very pleased and happy with how that race went but I want to do better this time. Next week starts the speed phase and I'm going to be very intentional about making sure I do whatever I can to set myself up for success.

Anyway, I also found these comments by myself that I thought I would share:

Hopefully when the marathon gets tough next month, I can just remember that I survived a donut mile

Definitely going to keep this in mind during training. If I can survive a donut mile, I can survive anything.

One easy improvement I think that could be made is running through one of the water parks instead of so much time in WWoS or the awkward out and back before Animal Kingdom. In my dream world, I’d also love the opportunity to run through Epcot first instead of last. Two big reasons for this: I’d get to see Epcot all lit up and by mile 25 I was really just ready to be finished.

It's funny to me that I made this suggestion in 2018 and they've since modified the course to do both of these things. I'm still hoping for the early Epcot miles, but after reading about BB, maybe running through WWoS isn't so bad

I've done a Hansons variant plan 8 times out of my 16 marathons. Those 8 marathons are my 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th, and 11th fastest times. That includes two Dopeys and a 3/4 Dopey (HM cancelled year).

Have you ever considered Pfitz? I see a lot of redditors talk about it. I'm fully committed to Hanson right now, but I also just like doing new things so it's piqued my interest for the future. At my current rate of one marathon every 5 years, there could be something new to try by then anyway

 

[striker1064]

Have you ever considered Pfitz? I see a lot of redditors talk about it.

I picked up the book solely due to how much r/AdvancedRunning talks about it. It's a nice, structured plan just like Hanson's, but it seems pretty high-mileage. I'd like to try it someday too; I'd bet it works best if your body can take that much mileage (I'm not entirely certain I can, at least not right now). I also think I probably spend too much time on Reddit.

 

[DopeyBadger]

I was reading through my old entries today trying to figure out when/why my training didn't go as planned last time so I could glean any lessons and avoid falling into the same pitfalls. Honestly, and this is a tough pill to swallow, I think I just didn't make running my priority. I made non-running decisions that made it difficult to stick to the plan. Most of this occurred early in the plan which snowballed into me not being able to complete the workouts at the prescribed paces later on and ultimately I had to adjust my pace goals. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very pleased and happy with how that race went but I want to do better this time. Next week starts the speed phase and I'm going to be very intentional about making sure I do whatever I can to set myself up for success.

Anyway, I also found these comments by myself that I thought I would share:

Definitely going to keep this in mind during training. If I can survive a donut mile, I can survive anything.


It's funny to me that I made this suggestion in 2018 and they've since modified the course to do both of these things. I'm still hoping for the early Epcot miles, but after reading about BB, maybe running through WWoS isn't so bad


Have you ever considered Pfitz? I see a lot of redditors talk about it. I'm fully committed to Hanson right now, but I also just like doing new things so it's piqued my interest for the future. At my current rate of one marathon every 5 years, there could be something new to try by then anyway

The biggest critique I’ve read against the Pftiz plan is it has a flipped specificity. Towards the end of the plan it shifts to partially focusing on 5k/10k pacing. Kind of like a reverse Hansons.