Training Plans

This week I'm going though my training plan debate. Usually I go through it once every month or two. This time I even posted about it on the TriFuel forums. The replies gave very good input, but it's an impossible question to answer.

It seems like we have the Mark Allen / Phil Maffetone approach in one corner. It preaches that going at a low heart rate for a long time will build a solid base, then over time your speed will get faster while keeping the same low HR. In the other corner, we have Endurance Nation / Michael Mccormack with the opposite approach. Instead of going long and slow in the off season, they tell us to work on short and fast sessions. This builds up speed, then you can increase endurance during the peak of the season.

For now, I need to avoid injuries, and have fun. When the day comes that I stop improving, I'll worry about what plan I'm using.

Quest for Boston

After my less than impressive run performance at my first HIM, I felt the need to redeem myself with a good race. Problem is, the HIM was my last scheduled race, and I couldn't find anything the following weekend. The 2nd and 3rd weekend after the race were consumed with moving my family's posessions from Ohio to Alabama. Those weeks consisted of around 1 hour of training per week. Weekends 4 and 5 were spent traveling to and from Myrtle Beach, where we spent our Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving I ran a great 8k, which got some of the bad taste out of my mouth. However, since I'm not going to do another HIM soon, I need a good marathon, or at least a half marathon to really feel like my bad HIM run was a fluke. I want to prove to myself that I'm actually in much better shape than my time indicates.

When I got home from the 8k, I plugged my time into Jack Daniels VDot calc. It gave me a value of 50, which means I should be able to run a 3:10 marathon. Not bad at all. It got me thinking...

That brings me to last week. Instead of finding the first 10+ mile race to conquer, I decided to qualify for Boston. I'd need to find a late spring marathon to give me about 16 weeks to prepare, then I'd have 30+ weeks to prepare for my two fall IM's. The race would also need to be close enough to drive to on Saturday, race Sunday, and be back in time for work on Monday. I'm all out of vacation. Atlanta Marathon is March 29th, and fits all my requirements.

Last week I asked Paul if he would work on a training schedule for me. Paul owns the local running store where I meet about 20 other runners every Tues and Thurs for a 6 miles at 6am. He asked questions about how many miles/week I was willing to run, what my goal time is, if avoiding injury was a top priority or not, and what my vo2 max, at, lt, and all that is. This week I told him I wanted to run a 3:10, I'd fit in 50 miles per week, and I had my first vo2 test done (it's 57, if that means anything).