You must be swift as the coursing river (as long as it's the Lazy River) - comments welcome

[Naomeri]

Even though it isn’t the time you wanted, it’s kind of cool that your time was 22:22

 

[nancipants]

Great job, despite not feeling it. 22:22 is a fun result.

I definitely agree with you about the sun. It’s been brutally hot and humid here lately, with very little cloud cover. My neighborhood has good tree cover along the main road, but not always in the individual subdivisions, and when I’m in the sun I definitely feel like my heart rate spikes. This morning I stayed in the shade as much as possibly and felt noticeably better than the last time I ran outside.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Even though it isn’t the time you wanted, it’s kind of cool that your time was 22:22

In only slightly less than 200 years, I'll have run the year in a 5K!

I definitely agree with you about the sun. It’s been brutally hot and humid here lately, with very little cloud cover. My neighborhood has good tree cover along the main road, but not always in the individual subdivisions, and when I’m in the sun I definitely feel like my heart rate spikes. This morning I stayed in the shade as much as possibly and felt noticeably better than the last time I ran outside.

Oof, and the sun is absolutely stronger in Florida, too

 

[azrivest]

2. I feel like I'm really proving my theory that the sun is a huge missing factor in standard heat adjustments. The T+D was actually only maybe 120 or a little above that, but the sun was brutal. There's some shade on the course but not a lot, and on the way back we were running more or less into the sun, which made it even worse. I think the sun made more of a difference than the temperature or humidity here. And on a related note...

Thanks for making me feel validated about my half performance a week ago

Congrats on the 22:22, it's still a great time and really not far off your 21:56!

 

[WillRunForPizza]

June 3 - 9, 2024
5K training week 11
In which we reach the end


Last week's schedule

Monday
Easy/strides: 5.09 miles (9:31), avg. HR 153, max 179, 86% Z1-2
Upper body strength

A little too fast. It was also back to being hot and humid - not too awful when there was cloud cover but rough when the sun came out. I got home and I was very sweaty.

Light weights on the strength training to avoid too much effort.

Tuesday
Workout: 2 mile WU/strides + 5 x 3 min @ 5KP (7:06 -> 7:19)/2 min RI + 1.15 mile CD
Interval split paces: 7:00, 7:06, 6:48, 7:07, 7:09
GAP: 7:00, 7:09, 6:46, 7:08, 7:08
Total: 6.21 miles, avg. HR 165, max 192
Lower body strength


Workout analysis (GAP) chart

It was STEAMY. Just what you want when you're trying to do a workout. I was especially glad I increased the duration of my recovery intervals this time around.

Maybe because of the longer breaks, I actually felt better than the last time I did this workout. Or maybe because I was a little more conservative with my paces (except for #3 - not sure what happened there ). I still had a bit of a headache afterwards, but it wasn't as bad. (Probably I should have taken one of my SaltStick products, but I didn't think about it until it was too late.)

Downside, apparently doing better at the workout did not mean I did better at the race

Wednesday
Easy: 5 miles (10:15), avg. HR 145, max 159, 100% Z1-2
Core

Just trying to take it easy heading into the race. My Achilles was a little cranky when I woke up, which was worrying, but I had no issues with it on the run. Two more runs, Achilles! Then we get a break.

It was disgustingly hot and humid again, but it was also cloudy so I felt fine. I feel like this is a serious oversight of the T+D chart.

Thursday
Off

Friday
Easy/strides: 3.14 miles (10:33), avg. HR 149, max 175, 92% Z1-2

It was an okay shakeout. Why do they always feel harder than they should, though? This seems to be a perennial issue. In fairness, I started off running running uphill on the sunny side of the street, later in the morning than usual so it would be warmer.

Although most of my effort was going towards as much heat acclimation as possible so the parkrun at 9 a.m. would feel cooler, I did have a cooling idea I wanted to try out before the race. I soaked my shirt and hat with water before I went out, and I did feel a bit cooler. For maybe 15 minutes. Still, that's better than nothing, and I can do it at the water fountain right before we start. It didn't hurt, so it seemed worth a try.

I ended my run at Krispy Kreme to get my free doughnut for National Doughnut Day

Saturday
Race: 2.5 mile WU/strides + 5K @ 5KP + 4.2 mile CD

Recap above!

Sunday
Off

Totals
Running: 4h 41m, 29.23 miles
Strength/mobility: 53m
Total: 5h 53m


Is this giving anyone else ugly Christmas wrapping paper vibes?

Well, that's it for 5K training!

Coming up
NOTHING.

Lol, not really. But I don't have any set plans until I start marathon training on July 8. I'm thinking the next week or two will be very light, and then I'll kind of get back to normal running without any speedwork leading into the actual marathon plan. Which I still have to finish

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Thanks for making me feel validated about my half performance a week ago

You should! Running in bright sunlight is so much harder than it seems like it should be!

 

[DopeyBadger]

Some good lessons learned it seems! Wet Bulb Globe Temperature takes into account solar radiation as well, but is a little harder to get access to when I last looked into it.

https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Some good lessons learned it seems! Wet Bulb Globe Temperature takes into account solar radiation as well, but is a little harder to get access to when I last looked into it.

https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt

Interesting! That does sound both more useful and more complicated.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

June 10 - 16, 2024
In which I milk my break

I did very little this past week, partly because my parents were visiting and partly because I wanted to take a break after finishing my 5K training block. (The coincidence of these two weeks was intentional ) A quick recap, with very little detail because I'm not technically training for anything right now:

• M: rest
• T: upper body strength
• W: 4 miles easy
• T: lower body strength
• F: 4.5 miles easy
• S: off
• S: 60 min easy

After taking Sunday and Monday off, I was starting to feel restless, so I did an old upper body strength/cardio workout. I don't do this workout often because adding extra cardio when you're already running 45 miles a week seems kind of dumb. So it was nice to come back to it!

It looked like Wednesday would be our last day of nice weather for the foreseeable future, so I had to get at least a short run in. It was glorious! Then on Thursday I tried a new lower body routine. It was a good workout, but I didn't really like the Tabata intervals for strength training. By Friday the heat was definitely getting up there - my average pace was more than a minute per mile slower than Wednesday

On Saturday we went to a baseball game! I hadn't been since they instituted the new rules, and I was shocked at how fast it went. The whole game took maybe 2 hours and 15 minutes And the Nats won!


A view of the infield from the first base side at Nats Park

Sunday's run was warm but fine. I was on my hilly route, and it was hilly. I had to try to time it so I could finish my run and then meet my mom at the farmers market, and I actually ended up running exactly an hour. Go me! Then my parents headed out in the evening.

Totals
I did 5 things

Running: 2h 25m, 14.56 miles
Strength/mobility: 59m
Total: 3h 24m

 

[avondale]

3. Maybe it's just not a great idea to race in the summer.

(Just catching up after being away...) I decided this several years ago. You always think, "Maybe I'll get a little bit cooler weather than usual on race day" and then it never is, and your expectations are based on no T+D. Sigh. Way too frustrating.

On Saturday we went to a baseball game! I hadn't been since they instituted the new rules, and I was shocked at how fast it went. The whole game took maybe 2 hours and 15 minutes

I did this last summer for the first time and was pleasantly surprised as well. I enjoy baseball when it isn't dragged out endlessly.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Spring speed training review
In which I try to remember things

Recap
Here I am, finally getting around to looking back at how my speed training this winter/spring/early summer went. Originally, I had planned to train for the Princess 10K, the Rock 'n' Roll DC 5K, and another parkrun or two, with the plan running from January 8 - May 5 (17 weeks).

Things went fairly well to start. Training was mostly good, I got to watch the US Olympic Marathon Trials, I came up with a new mile PR in training, and I used that standard to help me get a PR at Princess


Running past Connections at the Princess 10K

Then things went kind of off the rails. I got some kind of illness where I couldn't do much for about three weeks So I had to adjust. I also ended up heading back up to DC the same day as Rock 'n' Roll, so I couldn't do that - probably for the best since I hadn't really been training.

Anyway, I changed the schedule so I was kind of starting over into an 11-week 5K training plan, with parkruns in week 3, 8, and 11 (originally in week 12, but I had to change this later on as my parents were visiting in week 12).

The first "practice" parkrun was technically a PR but not faster than I ran during Princess (according to Strava, anyway). The second, despite being extremely muddy, was a pretty big real PR The third was hot and a bit disappointing - an anticlimactic ending to the season, but oh well.

Stats
I guess I'll break this up since it really ended up being 2 training blocks.

Part 1:

• 8 weeks, 315 miles
• 1 mile (unofficial): 6:28
• 5K (unofficial): 22:25
• 10K: 45:50

Part 2:

• 11 weeks, 446 miles
• 5K #1: 22:43
• 5K #2: 21:46
• 5K #3: 22:22

My dog staring at the front door, waiting for his secondary humans (i.e. my parents) to arrive

Training review
In this plan, I added a few elements that I hadn't previously included specifically in my training. How did they go?

1. HIIT. I did a little bit (like 5-10 minutes) of HIIT each week instead of a second running workout. I didn't notice a particular effect from the HIIT, except that it was easier than it used to be. I don't think I'll do this in marathon training, though I might try to do tiny bursts of plyometrics a couple of times a week because that's supposed to be good for you.

2. Yoga. I did a short yoga routine once a week. I don't know that this helped my running necessarily, but I did like it, especially after I moved my yoga day to my rest day. It was a good day to get in some light activity. I might do this for marathon training.

3. More core. I went from one to two core workouts per week, and this was easily the most impactful change I made. My core most definitely got stronger, and I think it helped me keep decent running form when I started to get tired. I will absolutely keep doing this, and I'd recommend adding more core work to your routine if that's an area where you can improve!

What about the plan overall?

While the HIIT may or may not have helped, I do think I'm better off doing one workout per week than two (in addition to the long run, which sometimes includes faster paces as well). This is a very individual thing, so it's good to experiment.

I had a pretty good variety of workouts, which I always like. I didn't include a lot of race-pace work, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. As I discussed at length when I was putting together this plan, race paces don't necessarily line up with the paces that give you the greatest training benefit. Plus, you never know how fast you're going to be able to run until race day, so to me, practicing race pace doesn't have as much value as it might seem. Some, sure, but I'm coming to believe that race pace doesn't need to be a huge part of my training.

One last thing
That's pretty much it for the training/racing review, but there is one more thing I wanted to add. This was my first in-person experience with parkrun, and I can't say enough good things about it. It's free, it's weekly, it's officially timed, it's very well run, and they are really friendly and welcoming. They have a volunteer to walk behind everyone else, so you literally cannot be last. If you have one in your area, check it out sometime!

 

[WillRunForPizza]

June 17 - 23, 2024
In which it is approximately one million degrees out, but I have new shoes

• M: 4 miles easy + core
• T: 4 miles easy + upper body strength
• W: lower body strength/cardio
• T: 5 miles easy + core
• F: 5 miles easy + yoga
• S: 10 miles easy + upper body strength
• S: rest

About the runs, mostly what I have to say is: it was hot. We apparently had the hottest weekend in DC since 2016, which was fun Maybe I'm adapting to the heat before I start marathon training, though!

On Monday I didn't have a specific core workout planned, so I just picked the first one that came up on YouTube, and boy was it a throwback! Back to the voiceover days, lol. Still a nice little workout, though. After that, it was kind of a week of soreness: my shoulders were sore after the upper body routine, and after I made everything harder than it needed to be on Wednesday (single leg! more jumping!), my legs were sore too

Recently I realized I had a couple pairs of shoes getting up there in mileage, and my Ghosts, despite being a staple of my shoe rack for many years, were just not working for me anymore for some reason. I need a solid shoe rotation for marathon training. So I demoted the Ghosts to walking shoes and ordered a couple of new pairs that I found on sale. This week I finally got around to trying them.

First up was the Noosa Tri 15s on Thursday. They are the most obnoxiously colorful shoes I have ever seen. It looks like a Lisa Frank factory threw up on them. I love them.


Pink, green, and purple-splotched Noosa Tri 15s

Turns out they're pretty comfortable as well! I'll have to try them on a longer run to see how they do, but so far, so good.

On Friday it was time to try out the New Balance Rebel v3s. In appearance, these are like the polar opposite of the Noosa Tris. Which is fine; it's good to have options.


Plain black Rebel v3s

The first thing I noticed was that they were not built for heel-lock lacing. They have the eyelet, but the laces and tongue are too short - I had to make a teeny tiny bow. But on the run they were fairly comfortable. I like the Noosa Tris better, but these should be fine for easy/recovery runs.

I was thinking I was going to do some strength training in the afternoon on Friday, but I was tired and I didn't feel like it. Then I remembered that it was International Day of Yoga and Apple Fitness had a pretty badge. Yoga sounded better than strength training, and I wanted the pretty badge, so I did that instead. And now I am finally done with 30 Days of Yoga 2023!


Pretty mandala yoga badge from Apple Fitness

I tried out some LMNT (citrus salt) on Saturday, which was okay. It had a similar thickness/intensity of flavor to Liquid IV, which I despise, but the taste wasn't as syrupy. And I think my Novablast 3s, which have more than 400 miles on them at this point, are on their last legs, because my feet hurt. RIP, Novablast 3s; you did good.

Totals
Running: 4h 48m, 28.48 miles
Strength/mobility: 2h 23m
Total: 7h 12m

We'll call this Heat and Shoe Week.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

MCM training 2024: Initial thoughts
In which I think about planning

So hey, I'm supposed to start training for the Marine Corps Marathon in like a week and a half! Do I have a plan? No, no I do not. I do have all my long runs done, and I've started putting in the mid-week workouts, but it's still a work in progress. June has been surprisingly busy!

However, as I'm working on the details of the plan, I do have some new ideas I'm playing with.

Weekly schedule
First off, here's the new schedule I'm planning on:



It looks a bit different from what I've done in the past. Basically the whole rationale comes out of having the long run on Saturday:

• Long runs are on Saturday so I don't have to try to squeeze a farmers market visit around an 18-mile run Sunday morning.
• Last year, the day after those summer extra-long runs was a struggle. So this time I'm just taking the next day off. It is a bit weird to take Sunday off, but I think it will work out okay.
• I didn't want to jump into a workout the next day back, so that's on Tuesday, along with lower body strength in the interest of keeping the easy days easy and hard days hard.
• Easy runs: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Currently no strength/mobility planned for Wednesday - we'll see how I feel about it.
• Two strength days: Tuesday and Friday. This is a decrease from the three I had been doing, but hopefully it will be enough to maintain strength through marathon training. I'll add calf raises (Achilles rehab) to both days.
• Two core days: Monday and Thursday. Considering how much of a difference I noticed doing this in speed training, I'm keeping it.
• Medium-long runs are apparently good for marathon training, so I'll keep those from last time. That's Thursdays, all easy.
• I'll probably do drills/strides on Mondays and/or Fridays depending on how I'm feeling.
• I'm sticking with yoga on my rest days, but if I'm tired, that's probably the first thing to go. It's typically only about 20-25 minutes, though.

Pupper break! A photo of my dog's back half next to a pile of fur - somehow he sheds an incredible amount from his butt

Long runs
Besides the schedule, the other thing I'm adjusting is my long runs. Last time around, almost all of my long runs were either easy or increasing durations at marathon pace. However, as I continue to learn, I'm beginning to understand that marathon pace doesn't really have a physiological benefit. It's too fast to be easy (building aerobic capacity) but too slow to improve other thresholds (e.g., lactate threshold, VO2 max).

That doesn't mean there's no benefit to running at marathon pace. If you're training for a marathon, it's probably a good idea to include some marathon-pace work So I will be doing that, but mostly in the last six weeks or so, and often in combination with other paces.

Right now, my long run workouts (about half of the long runs) include a decent amount of marathon pace, but almost always with faster paces thrown in too. For example: 4 x 2 miles @ MP/3 min @ 10KP/2 min RI. My goal here is to practice marathon pace but also to practice running faster when I'm increasingly tired. 4 x 2 miles @ MP shouldn't be that hard, but adding in the pick-ups makes it quite a bit tougher. (I'm still debating the 10KP/RI durations here, so don't be shocked if this changes when I share the actual plan )

Mid-week workouts
The thing I want to be cautious about with all of these long run workouts is balancing them with the mid-week workouts. I don't want to do too much "hard" in one week. So I'm currently thinking I should focus most of my mid-week workouts on faster paces (LT and up) and hills.

The sense I've gotten from all of my podcasts/YouTube channels is that training at lactate threshold is pretty much always a good idea (as long as you're doing it right and not running too fast ). So definitely some of that. I also looked through the Daniels 2Q marathon plan, and he likes to alternate between T workouts and I and R mashups (basically 3K and mile pace). I might try the latter too. I didn't do any I pace work in my 5K training, and maybe that was a mistake

Regarding the hills...well, here's the MCM elevation map:



It is mostly pretty flat, but there's some significant hills at the beginning (could be okay to keep me from starting out too fast, but also, yuck) and towards the end. The last 0.2 miles is uphill, because the universe is a cruel, cruel place

Anyway, this means practicing some hills is probably a good idea. Not sure if I can totally mimic the up-down-flat-up structure, but I'll see what I can put together.

Mileage
Last time I did a marathon block, I peaked in the mid-50s (55 planned/57 actual). Not including the taper, I averaged a little less than 50 mpw. I plan to bump that up a little bit, but not as much as I might have if I hadn't strained my Achilles last time. I'm thinking a peak around 60, though whether that's planned or actual I haven't quite decided yet.

At 60 miles in a week, I could theoretically do a 20-mile long run. I don't have anything more than 18 on the schedule now, and that's as far as I've gone in the past. I don't know how much difference the extra two miles makes. I'm not opposed to a 20-mile long run in theory, but somewhere between 18 and 26.2 miles is the line where recovery takes 6 weeks, and I obviously don't want that in training. Probably that line is somewhere beyond 20 miles, but I don't actually know.

So basically I could go farther than 20 miles for my longest long runs, but I'm still not sure whether I want to.


Pupper break #2: I was trimming my dog's nails, and he looked so tragic with his face and paws hanging over the edge of the couch that I had to pause and take a photo

Paces
I decided to stick with my Princess 10K paces for marathon training. I think my 21:56 5K is possibly slightly faster from an equivalency perspective, but (a) it's a 5K, and the 10K seems like a somewhat better marathon predictor, and (b) I'm much more likely to run a little too fast than a little too slow in my workouts, so if my target paces are a little slower, it's like having a buffer.


Training paces

There aren't really opportunities during this training block to adjust (meaning no races), so that'll be it unless I notice something really weird happening.

Strategic strength training
Historically I have included specific strength workouts in my plan (from Fitness Blender which I have been using for 10+ years). However, I haven't put too much planning into what specific routines I do when. As a result, sometimes I end up with weird weeks, and what I'm doing doesn't necessarily make sense from a progression perspective. This time I want to put a little more planning in to make sure my strength and running work together.

Actual plan to come, presumably within the next 10 days Questions? Marathon training advice? Dog photos? Leave a comment!

 

[jmasgat]

Do I have a plan? No, no I do not.

No comments on the plan, it's just that when I read this I immediately thought of Zootopia and Nick Wilde's advice to Judy Hopps on how to do interviews.

Also, yeah for dog pics. I hear you on the dog hair. I remember the first time my DS and DH took a Furminator brush to "the late great" Buddy's butt. The volume of hair that came off was astounding, and he looked like a totally different dog. Also, I am amazed at anyone who can trim their dog's nails (or brush their teeth)

Good luck with your planning. Given your performances in the recent past, I am sure you will do well with whatever you come up with.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

No comments on the plan, it's just that when I read this I immediately thought of Zootopia and Nick Wilde's advice to Judy Hopps on how to do interviews.

Haha, I did not think of that when I was writing it, but now that you've said it...

Also, I am amazed at anyone who can trim their dog's nails (or brush their teeth)

He doesn't like it, but he would absolutely not tolerate anyone else doing it, so I'm stuck with it!

 

[avondale]

I'm impressed by your marathon training plan. You've had quite a bit of experience with what works well for you, so hopefully this will go well!

I know you live in the area, but I don't know how much you've paid attention to the weather on MCM day the past few years. Despite what statistics might suggest would happen, the past 5+ years it's almost always been unseasonably hot and humid. I ran MCM in 2017 (which got to mid 70s, sunny, and humid), and since then I've paid attention with the thought of "would I have preferred to run the race this year?" And it's almost always been a hard NOPE since then.

There's also very little shade. The shade that exists is on the first part of the course when it goes through Rock Creek; this is not so helpful since it's earlier (and cooler) in the race. The "beat the bridge" portion and after that are absolutely brutal and full Sun.

Finally, the race starts relatively late for a major marathon - maybe around 8am? I think that's because they want people to get to the start via Metro and that delays everything. But it means you don't get much of the cool morning temps.

I recall you saying how being in the full Sun made it so much worse than T+D would suggest, and I wouldn't disagree. You can acclimate to T+D in principle, but I don't really know if you can do the same thing for full Sun...I suppose so. But it's something you might want to think about. At least you're a fast runner so you won't be out on the course so long!

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Despite what statistics might suggest would happen, the past 5+ years it's almost always been unseasonably hot and humid.

Maybe this will be the year to break the trend??

There's also very little shade. The shade that exists is on the first part of the course when it goes through Rock Creek; this is not so helpful since it's earlier (and cooler) in the race. The "beat the bridge" portion and after that are absolutely brutal and full Sun.

Ugh, I hadn't thought about that part. I can tolerate a warm/humid day for late October, but if it's sunny too I might have problems

 

[WillRunForPizza]

June 24 - 30, 2024
In which either Strava is confused or I am

• M: 4 miles easy/strides + lower body strength
• T: upper body strength/kickboxing
• W: 5 miles easy/hill sprints + core
• T: 7 miles easy, mostly + lower body strength
• F: 5 miles easy + upper body strength
• S: 12 miles (easy-cut down-cool down)
• S: rest

It was extremely sticky this week. (I was particularly glad I wasn't planning on running today - the dew point is currently 77 ) I added back a touch of faster work early in the week with strides/hill sprints, and that was good.

I had originally planned to do Tuesday and Wednesday in the opposite order, but I hadn't been sleeping well, and on Tuesday morning, I was so tired that I took a nap after walking the dog and eating breakfast. And after that it was time for work and too hot anyway.

Thursday's strength workout turned me into a puddle. On Friday I did just a short routine because my...*googles back muscles*...lats, I think, were still sore from kickboxing. Huh. I thought those were higher. Guess not!

Given that my marathon plan starts with a 14-mile long run, I wanted to get something near that range done during my time "off". It was kind of gross out, but I felt good enough to start speeding up for a few mile after I turned around, which was nice. I got down to about 10K pace at around mile 10.5 before slowing for a "cool down". (Cool downs are not so effective when the T+D=150+ ) By the time I got home, everything I was wearing was absolutely dripping in sweat.

I had half a liter of Skratch, half a liter of water, a GU, a UCAN gel, and three SaltStick tabs. Despite the salt tabs, I still had a bit of a headache later on, though it was somewhat better after lunch and a nap.

There is something weird going on with my relative effort on Strava. Normally a run like this would be well over 100, but this one was 58. All my runs have dropped similarly. Maybe it's because I adjusted my HR zones? Only that should have made my runs look harder, and that's obviously not the case. Anyone else had this happen? It's really confusing my Fitness and Freshness. I can use perceived exertion instead, but it's more work and (normally) seems less accurate.

Totals
Running: 5h 25m, 33.35 miles
Strength/mobility: 2h 17m
Total: 7h 42m

One more week before I start marathon training...

 

[DopeyBadger]

Looks like a solid marathon training plan! Excited to see how it plays out!

 

[WillRunForPizza]

MCM training 2024: First draft
In which these things take a long time to write, and to talk about

Okay! Training starts in two days, and I finally have a draft of a plan. Did this take me approximately seventeen times longer than I thought it would? Yes, yes it did

For the curious, here's what the process looked like:

Step 1: Long runs. I figured out what mileage I wanted to do each week for my longest run and which I wanted to be easy vs. including some faster paces. And I did this for all 16 weeks before putting in anything else, because the long run is sort of the foundation of any marathon training plan. You build the whole foundation before you add the walls or the roof or the windows or whatever.

Having run a bunch of 12-13 milers during the winter/spring (and this is exactly why), I started at 14 miles, which is a bit of a jump but hopefully not too much of one. I also settled on long run workouts approximately every other week - initially I thought I would do them more often, but as I was planning that seemed like it might be too much.

My longest run is currently 18 miles, and I have four of those (compared to two last time). The first two are just easy, and the next two also have some faster work.

I have a cutback week every fourth week (mostly), and I decided to drop all the way back to 10-11 miles for those. I didn't do that consistently last time, and I feel like it might be helpful for recovery. Because I'm doing a half marathon in week 10 (at marathon pace, not racing), that did shift the weeks around some, but I erred on the side of more recovery weeks rather than fewer.

Planning the long runs meant I also kind of had to figure out the taper, which I currently have as sort of two weeks, again. However, my last peak week is actually in week 12, then week 13 is a small cut-back, week 14 builds again with more intensity but a smidge less than peak mileage, and then it's a taper for real.


My dog laying on his back across the front door, a.k.a. what happens when your Rottweiler can't decide whether it's time for guard dog duty or naps

Step 2: Mid-week workouts. Once I had the long runs done, I moved on to the mid-week workouts. Like I said in the last post, I want to be cautious about not overloading myself if I'm doing two workouts in a week. So in weeks with long run workouts, the mid-week workouts are mostly fast paces (like 3K/1M, or I/R in Daniels terms) or short hill reps, which is kind of the same thing but with the fun challenge of running uphill on top.

In weeks where I'm not doing a long run workout, I have more lactate threshold work. Often, that includes a few short hill reps too after the threshold section (and also before once or twice). Last time around, I tried to have more of a block structure to my training (like a speed section and then a threshold section and then a marathon specific section). However, I'm not sure that's necessarily all that helpful; my reading/listening on this topic has been mixed. So I'm mostly alternating between threshold and VO2max work, although I do shift the focus more to the marathon in the long run workouts in the last six weeks or so.

These first two steps took the vast majority of the time and the thinking

Step 3: Quality check. I've noticed that you can run into a problem when developing a plan (or I can, anyway - can't speak for anyone else). Let's call this problem tunnel vision: it's easy to fixate on individual workouts and forget to consider how they fit into training as a whole. That's how you end up hitting the same systems too many times in a row or have too much hard in one week. So at this point, with only the hard days in the plan, I looked through it all to make sure it made sense together. I also checked my math, because usually I come pretty close on the total daily mileage for workouts, but sometimes I come up with numbers that make no sense at all

After that, I started calculating. This time, I want to have a pretty good idea what the balance of easy and hard is in my plan, so I'm totaling the time for each. Since these two days include all the possible hard work I'm going to do while running (strides don't count), I could take a stab at the hard side of the equation. (Still very much an estimate, since the time on the distance intervals will vary, but closer than I've gotten before.) I believe you're supposed to count recovery intervals in the "hard" category, so it can be higher than you might expect.


A rather damp Rottweiler sitting in the living room. He gets a little disgruntled when I have to give him a bath

Step 4: Medium-long runs. Medium-long runs are like long runs, but shorter They don't really come up until you're doing HM/marathon training AND running probably 40+ miles a week. (Fun fact: because I created the plan in this order, I can tell you there are some weeks where just these three runs add up to almost 40 miles )

These might be 60-80% as long as the long run. With all the long runs already done, this part is pretty easy: I just start at the lower end of that range and work my way up. (I'm not doing a 14-mile medium-long run in weeks with 18-mile long runs, though. There's a limit.)

Step 5: Easy runs. The easy part! I think there are few times when my easy runs should fall outside the range of 45-75 minutes, so it's just a matter of fitting those in for the three remaining days per week.

Step 6: Calculating, revising, and checking. Now that all the runs are in, I can add up the easy mileage and make sure I'm not running too hard in any given week! After some adjusting, I still have a couple of weeks that are maybe 22% hard, but I'm going to say that's okay since most weeks are more like 10-15% hard. Also, 60 miles is a looooooottttttt of running Hopefully I can, like, actually do this

Then, with all of the running in the plan, I gave it another once-over to make sure everything made sense. I made a couple of tweaks, debated my taper plan, again, and then added in the strength and mobility work. I still have to put in the specific routines, but this is enough to get started at least.

Soooo....here's the plan!



Starting off (relatively) easy. I have learned that the first couple of weeks of a training plan are pretty much always complete crap, so I no longer put specific paces in. Hill repeats are hard regardless, and the pyramid should be faster as reps get shorter but nothing prescribed. Hopefully by the end of week 2, paces will be available to me, but I do have a longer rest than I normally would, both because it will inevitably be miserably hot and because it's early in the plan. This mileage is comparable to what I was doing in 5K training, so I'm hoping it's not too much of a stretch for the beginning of a marathon plan even if I haven't been running quite as much for the past month or so.



As I mentioned in the last planning post, MCM has some hills at the beginning and end. So I'm doing significantly more hill work this cycle than I have in the past. Mostly that's short reps like in week 4, but I have some grindier workouts too like in week 3. Now, I would normally do this kind of workout by time, but I have one hill where this will work and it's almost exactly half a mile from one traffic light to the next, so that's what I'm doing. And it's LTE (lactate threshold effort) rather than LTP because if I tried to run the exact pace uphill, I would die Week 4 is a step-back week to give my body a chance to recover and consolidate the fitness gains, so just a short (lol) long run with a progression kind of like what I did last week.



In week 5, I have some longer threshold intervals because I'm not doing a workout in my long run. Then there's the first 18-miler. Week 6 boasts some faster reps - I do want to have some VO2max work in my plan, especially at the beginning. Most of the time I end with hill reps, but because the biggest hill at MCM is at the beginning, I thought I'd try running the hill first and then doing some work at M pace and faster.



Look at me progressing specific workouts! Week 7 has the same workout as week 3 but with more reps. I definitely didn't do that just because my workout-invention creativity muscle was tired. Nope, not me. Another 18-mile long run, then some faster work again with mini-progression reps. And a cut-back/long run workout week seems like a good time for the Michigan, which I have done several times since Billy first put it in my plan last spring (that's 2 mile WU + (1 mile @ 10KP + 1 mile @ HMP + 0.75 mile @ 10KP + 1 mile @ HMP + 0.5 mile @ 5KP + 1 mile @ HMP + 0.25 mile @ 5KP) w/ 2.5 min easy between reps + 2 mile CD). It looks harder than it is, especially at this point when I should be getting into a groove halfway through the plan.



Week 9 features another step up from a previous workout, this time from week 5. Then a quick little progression in week 10 leading into race week! I learned last year that racing a half in the middle of marathon training is tough for me, so this time I'll plan to run no faster than marathon pace. This is pretty much my only extended duration at MP, so it'll be a good check-in I hope.

You might notice that week 10 is a much higher mileage week than I said I wanted to do, but that's really just a quirk of my schedule. Normally I have Sundays off, but since the race is on Sunday, I swapped Sunday and Monday. So week 10 is a lot of miles and 7 days of running, but week 11 has two rest days and is quite a step back.



I've got a pretty easy week after the half, and then I jump back up to hard work again. Another repeat workout in week 12, this time progressing the workout from week 6, and then those 2-mile repeats with a pick-up at the end that I talked about in the last post.



The convenient thing about writing workouts for yourself is that you don't necessarily have to explain as much. The descending ladder in week 13 is meant to get faster as the reps get shorter - no specific pace guidelines, but if I start out too fast, it will not end well Then in week 14, my mid-week workout starts AND ends with hill reps, because that's what the race looks like. The long run workout is a bit like the marathon simulator I've done in the past, but I think it's not quite as difficult. Still, that 3 miles at what amounts to HMP after running 11 miles already is probably going to feel tough...



With 12 days to go before race day, there's still time in week 15 for a challenging progression workout that should make M pace feel really easy! The long run workout is NOT meant to be challenging, however; it's just a reminder of what M pace feels like going into race week. Then in week 16, things come full circle, with the same hill workout I started with. And then it's race day!

Well, that's the plan as it stands - thoughts? Suggestions? Times I mathed wrong? I would love any input!