Where to go from here? Plans for 2021
Before the Non-Cancelled Marathon had started, I had my eye on the Madison Marathon 2021 in November or maybe doing mile training.
During the Non-Cancelled Marathon, I questioned whether I wanted to run a marathon again so soon. I thought maybe of doing mile training instead.
After the Non-Cancelled Marathon, I shifted back to about 50/50 on whether I wanted to do the marathon or the mile training.
At this moment in time, I'm leaning towards the Madison Marathon in November. If I end up doing Princess 2022, then realistically it wouldn't be until Fall 2022 before I would do another marathon. I wasn't sure whether that's what I wanted for myself. So I thought maybe a line up of:
Summer/Fall 2021 - Madison Marathon
Winter 2021-2022 - Princess HM
Spring 2022 - Mile Training
Summer/Fall 2022 - Marathon
With that being said, I won't sign up for a while and will just go through the motions for the time being. I've got the Hot2Trot HM in mid-June coming up next. But realistically, there isn't enough time to get in good recovery, then training, for this race. So it's just kind of something I'll go out and do for fun. With that in mind, I took a deep look at myself and decided that my legs just aren't healthy enough after this 10 day break from running/training. I'm like 90% confident that I've got another fibula stress fracture on the back of my left leg. I had one in January 2018 after Dopey 2018 on my right leg. I went back and read through this journal describing what it felt like before the races at the tail end of training, during the races (none), and after a 10 day running hiatus (it came back). And honestly many of the things I wrote then feel quite similar to now. Back then I tried to return to running, only to have pain nearly every day. I took another week off, then came back to still the same issues. It took 35 days off from running till a return led to zero issues. So I'm thinking I need a similar 5 week break to allow things to heal up. I think this will be good all around for my body. I think in the mean time, I'll do some extremely easy cycling 4 days per week, and reintroduce some 80 day obsession workouts (AAA, TBC, and Legs (but no jumping)).
The Non-Cancelled Marathon didn't go as expected. So I sat down with the data to try and decide what to do next. Where did I think things went wrong? Up through 4/18/21, the training looked good. But I definitely fell off an edge from a HRvPace perspective during the taper. Despite the easy run days on 4/21 and 4/22 being mirrored matches to two weeks prior, there were already signs that I was starting to fade physically. And this was again evident in my long run on 4/25 when my HRvPace relationship had jumped despite good weather to 7:42 pace at 143 bpm. Turn to the race itself and it was 7:57 pace at 144 bpm. I think the tweak at the HM turn played a role, but honestly I'm not sure how much of the quad pain was from the tweak and how much was from the training itself. And what exactly about the training needed to be different for the next go-around. So I went through and laid out some options for myself:
Option 1 - Do the same training from Fall/Winter 2020
Start with a focus on 4 days per week cycling, 4 days per week running, and 2-3 days per week of McMillan Core/Legs. The cycling would be hard to start, and the running would be easy. Then with 9-11 weeks to go until race day, change the focus to hard running and easy cycling. Every once in a while would be a hard cycle, but it would be mostly easy. The cycling would drop to 3 days per week and the running would increase to 5 days per week. The hard running days would be focused on HM Tempo bricks and sustained hill loops of about 3 minutes. Maxing out at 150 min long run and around 6-6.5 hrs running (47 miles) with 5 hrs of cycling.
Option 2 - Do similar to Fall/Winter 2020, but drop the cycling to extremely easy
The same as option 1, except during the second phase of training I would drop all the cycling down from easy to extremely easy.
Option 3 - Do similar to Fall/Winter 2019, but drop the cycling to extremely easy
So I don't want to do the same cycling volume as I was doing during the Full IM High Volume training plan in 2019. So it does beg the question whether I'd be in the same fitness place in November 2021 as I was in 2019 when I ran the 1:28:40 HM. But I would very likely make all of the cycling (4 days per week throughout) extremely easy during the entire training plan. The running plan would stay the same as in 2019. The total volume of running is less than the 2020 plan (peaks at 5 hrs running vs 6-6.5 hrs running), but this plan went through multiple 150 min and 160 min LRs. This plan also had sometimes 3 hard running days per week in a 4 day plan. But the hardness of those days was debatable. Although during 2019 they were hard because I had a ton of hard cycling during that same time period.
Option 4 - Pftizinger Marathon Plan 55 mile peak/ 18 weeks
It was at this point I asked myself what the purpose of the cycling was originally. I went from 100% running to a mix of running and cycling because I had sustained multiple injuries when trying to run high volume. I had the undiagnosed stress fracture after Lakefront 2016 which resolved during the two week running break, the diagnosed fibula stress fracture after Dopey 2018, and the ankle tendonitis during Chicago 2018 training when I was doing a 70 mile peak Daniels Marathon plan. So after that, I added in cycling to reduce my running injuries. But during the time spent running and cycling, I've suffered a quad injury during Disney 2020 that left me unable to complete the race well, a hamstring injury during Daniels mile training (likely because of 3 days per week of speed training to be fair), an ankle injury during Winter 2020 (likely due to ankle hypomobility), something with my quad during the Non-Cancelled Marathon 2021, and potentially an undiagnosed fibula stress fracture in my left leg after Non-Cancelled Marathon training. So I'm not having a good track record thus far. It could easily be explained by overtraining. And maybe Options 1-3 would help mediate that. Drop the cycling from any specific type of training to simply spinning the wheels at a cadence around 85-90 rpm. So I decided to go back and look at all the training plans used for the previous 15 marathons, the PRs/race times leading into those races, the actual marathon result, and how close I came to the VDOT race equivalent performance to the other distance PR/race times.
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So prior to doing Hansons, I trained using either a non-run/walk Galloway or FIRST without cross training. During those races, I was about 19-70 min off the predicted time. Then I started doing Hansons in Fall 2015. The first time I used Hansons, I did something I coined the Hansons Intermediate plan. I merged the Hansons Beginner with Hansons Advanced by taking the mileage from Beginner and mixing with the 5k and MT-10 sec hard workouts from Advanced. That first time out, I beat my VDOT prediction by 30 seconds. My Dopey marathon improved by 10 min vs the prior prediction performance after following Hansons Advanced. I followed Hansons Advanced again in May 2016 and was a mere 3 min off predicted. In October 2016 I did "Hansons but harder" and beat my prediction by 1:40, but suffered an undiagnosed stress fracture. I went back to Hansons Advanced during Dopey 2017, and without the HM present the day before was a mere 38 seconds off predicted time based on PRs, despite the 5k/10k being the two days prior. Then in Spring 2017 I did the Daniels 5k/10k plan and made a big jump in fitness. I followed that up with a modified Hansons Elite plan, and ran 7:43 slower than predicted. Lastly, I did a Hansons/Daniels mix for Dopey 2018 and despite having 3 races prior was only off my predicted fitness by 12 min. But I had a stress fracture after that race. Once I started running less and doing additional cycling, my marathon times have been 18 min, 30 min, and 18 min slower than predicted. That's despite going from spending 7-9 hrs running to 12-20 hrs of total training. Was the time investment still worth it, if I still got injured during the training and had lesser final results? Yes, the 2019 HM of 1:28:40 showed I can be in a good place fitness wise from the training, but I hadn't yet shown the payoff for the marathon itself. Whereas, training with the Hansons plans led me to 30s better, 3 min worse, 100s better, 38s worse, and 7:43 worse. All in all times very close to what I had run in lesser distances. And during each of those races I was injured once with an undiagnosed SF.
So I went back to the running books from Daniels, Pftiz, and Hansons and modeled the plans. I haven't done a Pftiz plan yet. So I read the book cover to cover in an afternoon. He's clearly a Daniels disciple and not that different from either Daniels or Hansons. But he has his own unique twist to the training. I went with the Pftiz 55/18 week plan which is his lower of the two in the book. It's mostly a 5 day a week plan. He flips the specificity compared to Hansons. So his plan starts with Threshold paced runs and then toward the end does 5k paced runs. The Threshold runs are way more aggressive than the Daniels versions. Where Daniels does Threshold intervals, no more than 20 min per interval, a run:rest ratio of 5min:1min, and no more than 60 min total. Pftiz does no rest Threshold runs maxing at 7 miles or 43 min. His Long runs are always progressive and cap at 20 miles (2:40 for me). He wants them broken into thirds with the first third at 20% slower than M Tempo, then 15% slower, then 10% slower. So for me that would be something like 8:24, 8:00, and 7:42. So all in all slower than what I had been doing my LRs at. He also mixes in three 10k races in the last 7 weeks of training in order to work on race preparedness. Lastly, he does fast finish long runs with M Tempo, but with a massive amount of M Tempo. It peaks at a 4 mile LR + 14 mile M Tempo. In total, the plan peaks at 7.5 hrs running and 55 miles. It has six runs of 140 min or more. I'm not too fond of what the training load calculations say the taper looks like though.
Option 5 - Hansons Advanced
Next I dusted off the Hansons book and wrote out the Hansons Advanced plan. Nothing was surprising to me as I've done this plan plenty of times prior. Three times, no injuries and good results. But I've never done the plan since my fitness jumped after Spring 2017. So I typed in the plan and looked at the numbers. The plan would peak at 8 hrs of running and 60 miles. The LR of 16 miles peaks at 128 min. Which is interesting because back in the day that was 150 min for me. The 10 mile M Tempo peak which used to be 120 min is now 97 min. Those speed days went from 90-100 min to 60-80 min. And the taper looks great per the training load data.
Option 6 - Hansons Intermediate
Lastly, I thought why not go back to my roots. Run the Hansons Intermediate plan I made in 2015 that got me a fantastic result. What would that look like now. There are some differences between the Advanced and Intermediate plan mostly revolving around an extra mile here or there on Wed/Fri/Sat. This plan would peak at 7.5 hrs and 55 miles. Never exceeding 128 min in a single run. With the LR consisting of 30% of the weekly mileage at its peak. When I finally finished writing the plan out, I said to myself, this looks easy. It looks too easy compared to what I've been doing recently and to what I've done in the past. When I did this plan in 2015, it was 8-9 hrs of running per week. And now it's 6.5-7.5 of running per week. But then I reiterated to myself that the plan looked too easy. And that's when I decided it was the right plan for the moment. I wanted to try and run a plan off my new fitness level that on paper looked too easy to me. Stop reaching for more and that ultimate level, and see what happens when I grab the plan off the lowest shelf instead of the highest shelf.
So after days of data crunching and soul searching, that's where I'm at right now. Mentally I want to try and do the Hansons Intermediate plan from 2015. No cycling during the plan. Do some 80DO strength workouts here and there. And then run the Madison M in November to see what happens. Obviously, if circumstances change, then I'll adapt. But that's where my mind is right now.
Clear, Wind 13mph to 21mph
