Sunday, July 4, 2010

20 weeks to the Philly Marathon

November 21st - 20 weeks from now I will be running my 2nd Marathon. I am starting this blog to track my training, progress, failures, ups and downs, ins and outs and thoughts about my extensive training leading up to the Marathon. Hopefully, by doing this, I will see what I did right, what I did wrong, or help someone else in a similar plight. Who knows?
I have chosen to use coolrunning.com Advanced Marathon Training program.

http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_4/129.shtml

I followed the Intermediate Marathon program 95% for last year's Philly Marathon and did extremely well. I still will have the Intermediate on reserve just in case fatigue gets the best of me. But for all intensive purposes, I feel that the advanced will work for me.

I am 7 pounds heavier than I was last year at this time. I am also anywhere from 10-20 seconds per minute slower at my long run training pace at this time last year. (Currently 8:43 per minute per mile) This is mostly due to my eating and drinking habits. I eat very well, mostly vegetables, fruit, non-processed foods, a good balance of protein, fats, carbs and tons of fiber during the week. The weekend rolls around (Friday night - Sunday night) and my caloric intake and alcohol consumption demons turn 5 days of treating my body very well into just barely maintaining the same weight every week. With that said - with this year's training, I plan on cutting the weekend caloric and alcohol consumption days down to 1 instead of 2 or 3 days. God help me (and Paul, hehe!)

I finished last year's marathon at 4:11:40. Afterwards, I felt invincible, like I could do one after the other. The winter in Medford Lakes 2009-2010 was especially icy - so that put a damper on the idea of a spring 2010 Marathon. My goal after my first Marathon was to see if I could qualify for Boston (3:40), but right now, due to my pace slowing down a bit, I do not feel as confident. Seeing a few friends cross the finish line in Boston this year has inspired that goal to move towards, even if its not in the near future, but its something I would like to accomplish, nonetheless.

I belong to a wonderful running club, the Pineland Striders. I owe a lot of gratitude to each member of the club, they all inspire me in so many different ways. I wasn't a "joiner" before this, but after needing them to show me the way on last year's long training runs, I have come to look forward to running with them, being accountable to them, compete with them and enjoy being friends with them. Words cannot describe it, the closest thing to it can be described as a "running cult". It's much better than talking and swearing at your shadow. I also have a great running partner, Fran, whom I met a few days before Philly 2009 and it seems that now we are inseparable when it comes to running, she knows how I feel...nuf said.

I've been running whenever and wherever and however long I felt like it up until today. My milage was between 30-45 miles per week, my longest run since 2009 Philly Marathon was 16miles. At the beginning of this 20 weeks, I will be running lower milage per day/week and it will be hard for me to cut back. However, I want to find out in an honest fashion, that the training program that I have chosen works or does not work, so I must follow it.

So - 3 miles for today in the morning after I get up. That's just a warmup for me.

2 comments:

  1. Yay! I love blogs!!! Keep telling facebook when you update this & I'll keep reading it :) I'd like to get together sometime to run. 9 minutes is my 5K pace though, so it would have to be a short one for me

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  2. very nice Gina.....I look forward to reading about your journey

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