On the edge.

  I feel I'm on the verge of injury. My left ankle niggle is there today, and now my right shin is threatening to turn into shin splits and I have a pain in my right foot in one of my metatarsals that's threatening to become a stress fracture if I push it more. I have a recovery jog planned for today, though some cycle crosstraining may be the better part of wisdom. I know the best training, from what I've read, is one where you are pushing your training to the edge, where you are providing stimulus and on the edge of recovering, the maximum stimulus without overtraining. This is new territory for me as I've trained conservatively for the last 5 years and am now pushing the intensity. This modification of the 4 months to a 4 hour marathon plan has not been a good one, but you live and learn. It's all good to add to my collective running wisdom. Lots of easy running with a little harder running thrown in seems to be the winning prescription from what I've read so far. How to do that incrementally, increasing the intensity and volume incrementally that allows the body to adapt, seems to be the tricky part. Glad this is going to be a recovery week. Only a 15 miler tomorrow. Hope it goes well.
   Bit discouraged as I went to McMillan's running calculator and plugged in my 10 miler from the other day and got 4:04 for the marathon distance. That 10 miler trashed me, maybe a 85-90% max effort, and it was only :30/mile faster than marathon pace. It should have felt easier. Granted, it had some incline and hills and strong headwinds on part and wasn't run on a treadmill or track, but it is still discouraging. Makes me scared going into the marathon. I will have to work on my mental game, go into each run forgetting the past, and stay in the moment, trusting my body and taper to absorb the training.

More marathon training

  I've made it through the peak of the long run training I think with a 23 mile long run last Sunday and a 9.5 mile tempo run yesterday, injury free. I wouldn't recommend ramping up the mileage like I did on the long runs so quickly. I had a left ankle niggle going into yesterday's run that had me nervous but didn's manifest itself at all. Ironically, my right achilles and ankle felt tight. For the rest of the day however and this morning I have to pain, only some stiffness getting out of bed which is just cold tendons and such, so I am thankful for that .
    I started the schedule late and didn't run any 1/4mile repeats, instead having run hills for a the key workout for one month prior to starting the ramp up. I'm hoping that was enough. Yesterdays tempo run really was hard, and I don't think I could have run too much longer than I did. I was aiming for 10 miles as it was and cut it short. This makes me nervous as the pace was only 30 seconds per mile faster than marathon pace and my heart rate was jacked. I'm am hoping that the tempo runs in the next few weeks will do the trick for me.
    One more real long run, a 24 miler, and I'm good to go. I'm planning this week as a back off week, though I'm actually adding two recovery runs and just did the hard tempo run. I'm going to keep those runs low intensity, and do a shorter long run (though maybe I'll run it as a tempo run? you can really see I don't know what I'm doing here.)

Marathon Training

   The training has been going well. The long runs have tired me out a bit as well as the tempo runs necessitating dropping the volume. This weeks tempo run was on a treadmill in a hot exercise room here in Cleveland where I'm at with Julie, accompanying her for a play therapy conference. It's been close to freezing each morning, which is why I ran on the treadmill. I had to cut the distance as the heat cut into my endurance. I felt rotten. I would like to do some longer tempo runs, like 10 and 13 miles, but feel like i'm running out of time. I really don't know what I'm doing on the volume front. I feel my structure is good with 2-3 key workouts each week, but am unsure on the volume. I'm doing the marathon no matter what, though I feel my conditioning is less than I'd like. My confidence is down on my stamina, though I'm sure my endurance will be enough to finish. I'm going to go for it though, and see what happens. Afterward, I'll keep my long run long (2-4 hours per run) while upping my volume during the week, dropping the overall intensity of the mid week runs with maybe 1 key tempo or hill workout. We'll see. Psyched for the marathon though!

   Being in Cleveland I'm a bit worried about the long run, though it should be an adventure! I may just do a tour of the city, crisscrossing the whole thing till I hit the mileage. We'll see.