So much has happened since the last post! I'm surprised my brain hasn't exploded from so many ideas! Thus, it'll take a three-part post to capture it all...
After losing my coach, I knew I needed to come up with a plan...or hire someone else to do it for me. I came to realize no one would spend more time poring over my data than me, and although I am not (yet) an expert on marathon training, I have sharp analytical skills and am a pretty quick study. I also have this little hamster running on a wheel in my head...the family calls her Haley. :)
So Haley and I teamed up and tackled several of the seminal works on marathon training:
- Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide by Hal Higdon
- Marathon: You Can Do It! by Jeff Galloway
- Hanson's Marathon Method: A Renegade Path to Your Fastest Marathon by Luke Humphrey
It was my second read through Higdon, and it was cool to see how my perspective had changed with an extra 1,000 miles under my feet. I also went back and looked at my highlights from two of Matt Fitzgerald's books: Racing Weight and The New Rules of Marathon & Half-Marathon Nutrition.
And then, a spreadsheet was born.
I titled it, "Marathon Wisdom," created a column for each of the 4 authors listed above, and did a side by side comparison of their approaches. Areas of agreement in bold, disagreement in italics. For good measure, I highlighted things I think are key to my own training in yellow, greyed out the stuff I was vehemently opposed to, and used pink to mark things that piqued my interest for inclusion in my own plan.
And then it was time to create the plan. New spreadsheet. The first page started with key principles I want to adhere to in my training. Run happy, first and foremost. Beyond that, train as much as I can without breaking. :) Alternate hard days and easy days, and follow the 80/20 rule (80% easy running). Gradually increase mileage to 60/week (according to one source, beyond 60, risk of infection doubles), and try to hold that for several weeks before the marathon. Two steps forward and one step back when building mileage, with at least 2 weeks between super long runs. Include speed work once/week, and be sure to run an adequate number of miles at (or just faster than) goal pace. No more than one race/month before the big day, with time for a 10-day to 3-week taper at the end. Simple, right?
Between the experts, my former coach, friends, and my own creativity, I had several ideas about specific workouts I could do to achieve the above objectives, so I created another sheet for key workouts. I listed different types of long runs I want to do in one column, speed workouts in another, and strategies for easy runs in another. Then it was time to prioritize those and put them in some sort of order, expecting that I'll be able to handle progressively harder workouts as time goes by.
The next step was fitting those key workouts into a calendar, which, you guessed it, required creation of yet another spreadsheet. Upcoming races were anchor points, and I included work & social commitments so I could be realistic about how much time I could spend on any given day. I started dropping in long runs, spacing them with some tempo work on weeks between the super long ones, and with a few exceptions, I dedicated Thursdays to speed work. Then I added easy runs on the days in between to get to total mileage for the week, with 1-2 designated rest days each week. I gradually increased mileage to 60/week, while dropping back here and there along the way, sometimes to taper for that month's race. I color coded each planned run using the Rainbow of Running, which gives me a nice visual representation of hard and easy days....and makes it pretty! I went the extra mile (sorry) and calculated the expected number of miles in each HR zone, allowing me to predict how closely I'll follow the 80/20 rule. This was trickiest part. I actually landed closer to 75%. But after careful consideration, I decided the difference was not great enough to merit significant changes to the plan, as my approximations don't really take into account how much lower my heart rate should be at the same paces in a couple months, when the weather cools off and I'm super fit from additional training. The reality is that I probably will end up closer to 80/20...and might even have to start pushing myself a little harder to get 20% of my work above lactate threshold by then. We'll see. :)
That's the beauty of this little plan. It's mine. It's totally customized to me and totally tweakable by me at any time for any reason. The perfect marriage of structure with flexibility. And so far, I'm loving it!
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