Marathon Plan Week 15 of 24

First let me start with an ode to my treadmill. I almost never run outside. It’s usually just me, a movie and the grinding sound of my treadmill. Today, I ran a 10 mile “race” as a training run to get some time outside and on trails as the marathon I’m signed up for is 1/2 road and 1/2 trails. My goals for today were pretty simple: run the full 10 miles, do not get injured. Today was sunny and hot even at 7AM. The only shade on the trail was when it wound under roads. They provided water/accelerade at miles 2, 5, and 8. They gave us hammer gels at mile 5. Praise the hammer gel. I’ve used Heed, Recoverite and Perpetuem but I will be ordering gels later today. During my treadmill training runs my base pace is 12 plodding minutes per mile (5 mph). For “threshold” runs I can bump that up to about 11 minutes per mile (5.5 mph).  For interval runs I generally shoot for about 8.5 to 9.5 minutes per mile (6.3 to 7 mph) for one minute spurts. So today, we started out a bit fast for me. We finished the first 5 miles in 49 minutes. This was pretty dumb since the first 5 miles were generally all uphill. I ran with my HR monitor and knew I was pushing it a bit too hard. I like to keep my HR under 166 for longer runs and today only hit that target for 23 minutes during the entire 10 miles (average was 171 which for me at 38 years old is pushing it). Finished the entire 10 miles in about 1 hour 45 minutes, about 15 minutes faster than I had planned to run this thing. Official times should be posted within a few days so I’ll edit the real number in. So anyway, I think this happened in part because my treadmill is ALWAYS at an incline. It simply does not have anything less than a 1.5% grade to choose from. So hail the mighty treadmill, my faithful training partner.

This weeks plan:

• Monday: off
• Tuesday: Tempo Run 50 minutes total with 30 minutes at threshold pace
• Wednesday: Strength
• Thursday: Lactate Intervals 36 minutes total with 8 x 1 minute @ VO2 max pace, 1 minutes active recoveries
• Friday: Alternate Cardio 45 minutes
• Saturday: Optional Foundation Run 45 minutes; Strength
• Sunday: Long Run 2 hours 10 minutes (Hal Higdon minimum distance 13 miles)

I will confess that thus far (14 weeks) in this training plan I have only faithfully completed the Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday runs. I treat everything else as optional and often opt out. So, I’m training much less than I was when I tried this last year. My body fat is up a bit and yet my joints are much happier. My muscles do not constantly ache and so far I am on schedule with this plan. I am really pleased with today’s run both for how I feel (not as tired as I expected) and how fast I ran it (given h0w I’ve been training).

My husband, who does not run often, said to me after I came home something like “10 miles at about 6 mph, easy; I could do that.” Bah. I’ve bet him a fancy dinner out if he can do it today.