Day 66 is here!

So today is day 66 of my training program. Why is this significant? Because when I started this 20 week program, the race was 132 days away. 66 is half way there! Kind of daunting at the time, but it seems to have gone by so fast. I have not missed any running during the first half, I have however cut some runs short, for a variety of issues. The total miles I have shorted myself is 5, which I am okay with. The only days I have missed were my weight training days, which were not part of the training program in any event, and I have missed 4 of them.

I am not however, halfway there in mileage, the program has 460 miles total, and I am at 170 through week 9. Week 9 was my first 30 mile week, the next weeks are 32, 30, 28, 22, 29, 27, 39, then 22, 21 and then 35 (race day included).

I have been able to handle my goal pace pretty well, which is pointing towards a 5:30 marathon. The pace is roughly 12:30, my Wednesday and Thursday runs are all about pacing and tempo, with the Saturday run generally about speed and repeats, and the Sunday run being long and slow distance type runs.

I have experimented with a couple of different Galloway Run/Walk options, a 3 minute run and a 1 minute walk seems to work well, recently I have been doing a .35 mile run and a .15 mile walk concept that is basically a 4/2.20 run walk, which is also comfortable and seemingly effective.

Hopefully I handle the second half as well as the first half!

Week 9-- My longest run yet!

So even when I was in college and actually in shape, I never ran much more then 5-7 miles at a time, and never more then 10 miles, so my two half marathons qualify as my longest runs ever done at age 54 and 55 no less. Well no longer! Yesterday I did my first of 4 long runs of 15+ miles with a 15 miler (17, 18, and 20 are the others).

In addition I was able to set an unofficial PR for the half marathon of 2:47 which is 4 minutes and change faster then my Madison Half Marathon in November 2014.

I ate 5 various power bars along the way making sure my eating coincided with the actual aid stations at the Wisconsin Marathon (roughly every 2 miles), so I would eat and then be able to wash down the remnants at the aid station. It seemed to work, I stuck to about 125 calories and 30 carbs every 30 minutes, which seemed to work quite well, I was strong throughout the run, and did not feel weak from lack of energy at any point. In fact I ran the last 3/4 mile at a nice steady pace.

I am going to try gels for the next long run, since I was really only able to pack 6 bars on board and I really need about 8-9 to get the marathon distance. But that's why you experiment ahead of time. Either that or get a bigger pouch! By the way, I made a rule that even though I was on a treadmill, I only ate what I had in my waist pouch, to simulate actual race conditions, which went well.

I have been using a modification of my regular 3 minute run, 1 minute walk, recommended by the Galloway system and doing a .35 mile run and a .15 mile walk, which is like a 4:00/2:30 run walk sequence. I only did this to break up the boredom of running on a treadmill, but actually find it more comfortable for some reason. I am going to set my Garmin to the 4:2.5 time for the midweek runs in week 10 and see how that goes.

The rest of week 9, my runs on Wednesday and Thursday went very well, (4 miles of tempo, pace and 8 miles of steady pace) leaves me at 27 miles for the week, also my record.

Today I am running in the Round Lake Area Park District's foundation's Annual Frosty 5K, I have gotten age group medals in this race before, although today my legs might not be ready for a sustained effort. My goal is the 33-35 minute range for the day. Medals depend on how many people show up in my age group, if its 3, I finish 3rd. Its 14 degrees for race time at 11am, so that might keep attendance down.

NOTE: PR in the 5K at 34.21... see yesterday's post.

Frosty 5K-- Race Report

Okay news flash! It was cold out today, 16, according to my Garmin website. I was able to run a 1 minute 15 second PR at 34:21 breaking my old PR set in my last 5K for NICASA, even while debating stopping because I was so damn cold, for the first half of the race. Then my body temp must have gotten to the right point because I felt no cold the rest of the way.

I just missed a medal, finishing 4th in my age group, about 45 seconds behind the 3rd place runner and about 10 minutes behind first and second.

Overall I did not feel any residual problems from my long run the day before, which was nice to know, I loosened up indoors on the soccer field at the sports center with no discomfort, and literally other then incipient frostbite was good the whole way around

Wisconsin Marathon Route

So I drove up to Kenosha yesterday to drive the route of the marathon jut to get a feel for it. Flat with the potential for tons of wind, hopefully not. I also found this video on the race site, that now makes more sense as I follow it in my mind.

 

Week 8 is all over...12 more to go until race day!

So week 8 is done and wrapped up, 22 miles, runs of 3.5, 3.5, 7 and 8.25 miles. Today's run was supposed to be longer but I was ran out of food around Mile 5, and since I was so not paying attention to anything this morning, eating wise, by mile 8.25 I was bonking. Not the smartest move in the world.

Overall a good week, dropped a pound so I am down to 221, from 256 in January 2013, I can tell something is going on the last few weeks because clothes that were fitting a few weeks ago, are looser, then a month ago or so.

I am driving up to Kenosha today to recon the Wisconsin Marathon course today. Not so sure if eyeballing it ahead of time is a good idea, but I did get some value out of the Madison Half recon, it paid off to know about the giant hill at mile 8, that was good to be prepared for. I misread the map in Madison and was unaware of the slow uphill to the finish which took some time out of me, so a more diligent recon is needed here.

Week 7-- Slow and Fast

Despite the traveling to DC this week I had a decent week of training. I got 23 total miles in running with about 10-15 miles of walking in DC and at the convention center. Lots of the miles were long slow distance, which was good.

I also did 4 Yasso 800's as speed work on Sunday, in times of 5:40, 5:32, 5:34, 5:35 with a mile warmup and half mile cool down. Bart Yasso a long time senior manager for Runner's World Magazine and runner of 100's of marathons invented this workout. The thinking is that a few weeks before the Marathon you do 10 x 800 at a steady sustainable pace with a small spread in the time. This would be your projected marathon time based on your fitness, so if I were capable of running 10 of these (I am not right now) with a about a 2 minute break in between them, my likely finish time would be in the range of a 5:30 to 5:40 marathon.

So on to week 8 which is slightly altered, I am going to bring my tempo run up to Tuesday, since I have a speaking engagement in Barrington at 8am in the morning on Wednesday, its also a 13.1 run on the weekend, that I call test race. I am going to mimic all the fueling and the hydration needs as well as the clothing choices I have for the marathon. Testing out a few different outfits depending on race day weather, so I can follow the old adage "nothing new on race day".

Week 8 will have 27 miles of running, which will be my biggest week yet in terms of volume, but still in line with no more then a 15% increase in mileage from week to week.

Good Long Run Today

Had a nice solid 2 hours on a treadmill today, ran pretty well throughout. Tried a GU 100 calorie vanilla bean gel as my 40 minute fuel, which was not bad. Doing speed work tomorrow of 3 miles which will bring the weeks total to 23 miles.

Week 6 and Parts of Week 7

Was traveling most of week 7 to DC, so the week was chaotic in terms of time and ability to run, I hit all the workouts, jut not in the exact sequence that was planned. I also threw in about 9 miles of walking around the National Mall in between congressional appointments on Wednesday as well.

So Week 6 was 21 miles, the only thing that happened here of note, was since there was a blizzard, on Sunday morning when I was going to do my long run before flying to DC, I had to snow blow to get to gym and had to cut the long run in half for time constraints. So I did the second part of the run in the DC hotel gym I stayed at. Had a really nice set of treadmills, although initially I selected the one that was defective, out of 18 empty ones no less.

Week 7 is currently at 11 miles, with a 9 miler and a 3 miles of Yasso 800's on tap for this weekend. Overall I am feeling pretty good, my legs have been handling the mileage very comfortably. I must stay walking 9 miles in dress shoes did not help my feet much. But even they have recovered.

Some positive reinforcement from people at the conference who I had mostly not seen since the summer at the last conference on my weight loss, which was nice to hear.

I was also able to check off a bunch of X's on my chart, still only have 2 missed days so far, and both those were weight training days, and I really have only 4 lousy runs with just 2 that I cut short because I was just unable to go, mostly mental boredom on the treadmill as I look back at my run logs.

So 28 runs scheduled with 4 problems, to date I have run 112 miles on this program, and I am going to be ramping up the mileage going forward, 6 of the next 8 weeks have significant long runs in them to get me to the aerobic level I need. The long runs are 14, 13.1, 17, 17, 18 and 10.