Marathon Training: Day 6

Distance: 10 Miles (see map)

Analysis:
I completed the 10 miles at roughly a 10min/mile pace. 10min/mile is roughly 50 seconds slower than my goal pace, but I’m not overly concerned this early on. I did not wear a watch, heart rate monitor, or headphones, this was a leisurely pace for me and I doubt I broke out of the 160’s in HR at any time. I ate a homemade egg McMuffin about an hour before leaving and about 15-20 minutes before leaving had a protein bar. Felt a little too full and sluggish to start, this may have been too much food. The entire run was otherwise unsupported. Left calve started to feel tight around might 7-8 and the left leg felt tight towards the end but I opened up my pace a little without and increase in tightness. I wore my patella tendon knee braces and the besides small pain here and there the knees felt fine. I also was not incapacitated the rest of the day. I ate like a gorilla and came in well under on my calorie target. First long run is in the book, and the first week is behind me.
Total Miles For the Week = 23
Target miles = 29

Marathon Training: Day 5

Distance: Non Specific: 45-60 min easy

Analysis:

I ran ~3 miles and lifted. I didn’t lift too hard and avoided heavy legs completely. I gave this a "completed". I plan on using saturdays for general cross training activities including biking, XC skiing, snowboarding, hiking, etc.

Marathon Training: Day 4

Rest

DONE! Feel good, nothing sore. Turned out to be a pretty boring night. I got some good stretching and general loosening up in. Generally a boring day.

Marathon Training: Day 3

Distance: 6 miles, 4x GP 2x Tempo

Revised: 30 minutes biking, 2 miles walking.

Analysis:

BAH, I just straight up had no time for this and basically blew it off. I’m not sure I’d have done it anyway since it snowed a little, but either way, I got home at like 4:40 and I left at 5pm. I did ride my bike downtown and back home, so that’s my exercise for the day, but I can’t make a habit of this. Tomorrow is a rest day, I’ll see if I can get a lift in or something. The tradeoff here was instead of 6 miles running, I biking about 12 miles and got drunk. Free beer is not something I pass up often.

Marathon Training: Day 2

Distance: 4 miles with 4x100 speed intervals

Analysis:

Cold again, this run sucked. I overdressed to start and then I stripped down and got cold. I was hungry and felt slow. I still managed to do some decent speed intervals, but I don’t know how much I picked it up. I completed the entire 4 miles, so that’s a plus.

Marathon Training: Day 1

Preface:

I've been building up to this for a few months. In December, I signed up for the Colorado Colfax Marathon which takes place on May, 16th 2010. I tried to stay in decent shape over the winter, and the 16 week marathon training program began today. I'm going to try and track all of my training up to the marathon. This is as much to keep me on track as to keep my friends updated on my progress. I was keeping the log privately on my computer but now I'm going public. Some of the first posts will be a bit short on description because I was just keeping notes for myself.

Distance: 4x1 mile cruise pace runs

It was cold outside (low 40’s) and didn’t feel like running, I generally don’t like Tuesdays. I’ve kept up decent running health over the winter so far so 4 miles wasn’t intimidating, but the time was. I started to tell myself "missing one or two sessions is no big deal" then I realized that I can’t do that, especially on the first run. Overall these 4 miles went well, I felt good coming in around 8:00 to 8:20 which is right around my cruise interval and the 2 minute breaks were perfect. I ran the last of 4 miles in a quick 7:40 or so. My goal pace is 4 hours or 9:09 per mile. My "cruise" pace is 8:30-8:45 and my Tempo pace should be right around 8-8:15. I actually need to make sure I don’t over run these by too much.