Ryan Hall shattered the American record in the Half Marathon last month with a 59:43. Listen to him talk about it on The Competitors radio show. While you’re at it, check out the archives of interviews with triathletes and marathoners.
My favorites are the chats with Rod Dixon and Pat Tillman.
If I ever get a chance to focus on a good marathon, here’s the workout plan I put together. Some notes first — the plan is for 105 miles per week (give or take) except for the “Blast Week” where I try to do as much as possible and still be able to walk the next day. The plan is also similar to the one outlined by Dr. Jack Daniels — with some Lydiard mixed in, I guess — where the workouts are defined by two quality sessions per week. The other workouts are used to reach the weekly mileage goal.
Also, a “knockdown” is a progression/tempo run where each split is run faster than the previous one. In this regard, the splits are five miles, but can be altered to fit a specific plan.
Anyway, here it is:
Week 1
2 miles easy +
2 x 2 miles @ 5:35/mile +
9 miles easy +
3 miles @ 5:35/mile +
2 miles easy
4 miles easy +
5 x 1 mile @ 5:10/mile +
5 miles easy
Week 2
20 miles in 2:15
2 miles easy +
10 miles in 58
2 miles easy
Week 3
4 miles easy +
8 miles in 48 +
1 mile in 5:35 +
6 miles in 36 +
1 mile in 5:35 +
2 miles easy
knockdown in 33, 32, 31
Week 4
22 miles with 5 miles in 28
knockdown in 32, 31, 30
Week 5
22 miles in 2:28
2 miles easy +
10 miles in 58 +
2 miles easy
Week 6
20 miles with 12 in 72
knockdown in 32, 30, 29
Week 7
22 miles with 5 in 28, 10 easy, and 5 in 28
knockdown in 31, 30, 28
Week 8
22 miles in 2:27
4 easy +
10 in 57
1 mile cool down
Week 9
23 miles with 12 in 72
knockdown in 31, 31, 27
Week 10
22 miles with 5 in 28
knockdown in 32, 30, 29
Week 11
22 miles easy
4 miles easy +
5 x 1 mile @ 5:10/mile +
5 miles easy
Week 12
BLAST WEEK
Week 13
22 miles easy
5k or 10k race
Week 14
* 13 easy
* 10 easy
* 4 miles warm up and cool down + 3 in 16
* 6 miles easy
* 4-5 miles easy
* 3 miles easy
* 4 miles easy
It’s pretty safe to assume that my updates on this page may directly correlate to how well my running has been going. So obviously, it hasn’t been so hot – relatively speaking, of course.
Actually, it hasn’t been as bad as that. I still get out nearly every day, it’s just that since the end of December I hit the proverbial wall. Just like that I went from running hard and turning in some of the best workouts I’ve ever had to simply not wanting to do it… well, it hasn’t been that bad, but I definitely have had my share of days off.
Not that it’s a bad thing. As someone who was once chewed up and spit out by the sport not so long ago, I know I was walking on a tightrope. That’s the good part – I can pinpoint my mistake and exactly where everything went wrong. That’s good. Now the trick is to figure out how to get back to the place I once was.
So what happened? Simple. I bit off more than I could chew. My eyes were bigger than my stomach. Instead of breaking down after the Harrisburg Marathon last November, I pushed the envelope and thought I could get away with it. I was a degenerate sitting at the roulette wheel who thought he had the game figured out only to wonder where all my money went when the number didn’t come up.
Need any more bad analogies?
Because I ran “just” 2:53 at Harrisburg, which was a good 8 to 12 minutes slower than I should have run because of the 20 to 30 mile-per-hour headwinds, I figured that my body didn’t take the pounding it would have if I had run 2:40.
Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
It’s not the time, it’s the effort and I really busted my ass during the last five miles even though when I finished I didn’t feel as though I was done running. I wanted another 40 yards to catch the dude that was paced through the race like he was Lance Armstrong in New York or some silliness like that.
In reality, the silliness came from the “smart” dude who turned in four straight 100-mile weeks just two weeks after running a marathon.
The point of all of it was to be ready to take a strong crack at 2:35 at the National Marathon on March 24 and then gear up for 2:30 at Steamtown in early October. National, of course, wasn’t the important one but it was gearing up to be with the way the workouts were going during those four 100-mile weeks. Not only was the distance there, but also there was plenty of quality sessions, too. In fact, I think I made up a workout that I called “knockdowns” where the plan was to run a minute faster for each five-mile segment of a 15 miler. For instance, I wanted to do one effort in 33, 32 and 31 minutes for each split, but instead ran 33:14; 30:57; and 29:08.
That one made me feel like a badass.
But a week later a 20-miler knocked me out. It was work and I don’t know how I was able to force myself through it. Afterwards I only ran 10 kilometers over the next two days, took a bunch of days off over the next few weeks and pretty much gave up on National being anything more than another marathon to add to the collection.
Steamtown is out, too. With my wife due to have our second child in mid August, training for a race and heading out of town for a few days to run it kind of found a spot on the back burner. August and September are going to be pretty busy.
So things have been rearranged a bit. Hey, things happen. There’s nothing wrong with some new ideas, right? Try this one for instance: a marathon a month through the summer before re-focusing for another run at Harrisburg. All of those marathons will be run at workout pace and will be great for base building before gearing up a serious marathon in mid-November. In reality it’s the same kind of plan I used before the 1998 Boston Marathon where I used a couple of local races for long runs where I got an age-group trophy at the end.
The George Washington Marathon is coming up on Feb. 18. Then I can run National on March 24, maybe (maybe) Boston on April 16, and Delaware on May 20.
Good idea, huh?
Meanwhile, I’m contemplating doing a run from my house in Lancaster to the ballpark in Philadelphia a la Terry Fox. It could be a fun and interesting way to break up some of the monotony of my commute and every day workouts, though the logistics could be a bit difficult. The distance is about 70 miles as the crow flies, which I figure should take no more than 10 hours. I’ll probably need a support group and maybe a handful of people to run segments with me, as well as a good route with little traffic. The running will be the easy part.
If I can get out the door.
