I am baaacccckkkkkk! I have taken a year hiatus from documenting my training efforts, but it is time again to start training for a fall marathon. Or in my case two fall marathons. That’s right two: the Saint George Marathon (October 5th) and The Marine Corps Marathon (October 27th).
Thinking about October makes it seem really far away, but I was causally reminded yesterday that there are only 15 weeks standing between me and the starting line of the Saint George Marathon. Being just shy of 4 months that may seem like a long time to many. But in the mind of a runner I should have started at least 2 weeks ago. At least the mental preparation part. But being fresh off of running the Kaiser Permanente Colfax Marathon the last thing I have wanted to do it is think about running another marathon. But I no longer have a choice. The time is now to dive into training... both physically and mentally.
I have learned a lot during the last two marathons I trained for (2012 Bank of America Chicago Marathon and 2013 Kaiser Permanente Colfax Marathon) that I really need to apply to this round of training:
- Weekly mileage counts, a lot. For Chicago I did not train enough, I skipped weekday runs, vowing I would make them up later in the week which never happened, and consequently I was plagued by injury and never fully recovered before race day came. In hindsight I should have dropped out of the race, but being stubborn I pushed through it and didn't reach my time goal. But for Colfax I was much more diligent about completely weekday runs and it showed in my performance. While I sadly didn't make my time goal, I felt good after the crossing the finish line. I was happy with my performance. I finished and I wasn't injured!
- Nutrition matters. Training for Chicago put anything I wanted to in my mouth because I was constantly hungry. And I paid the price. Runs were miserable. I had to plan them according to where bathrooms were located around the city. But for Colfax I dialed in pre-race and long run meals. Figured out what mid-run nutrition worked best for my body. And made sure I drank plenty of water during the week. While I don’t have it completely nailed down I plan on doing so with this training plan.
- Track workouts are beneficial. Joining the Mile High Track Club was one of the best decisions I have made lately. I now have a love for getting up at 5am on Thursdays to go run in circles around a track for an hour or run repeatedly up a hill. I didn’t think it would help when training for longer distances. And I never in a million years thought this would be for me. The workouts sounded terrible and I always thought I wouldn’t be as fast as the others. But now I am out there every Thursday sprinting my butt off. I realized that it is not about being as fast as everybody else, but rather it is about proving to myself that I am stronger than I think.
- Train with people. They keep you accountable and sane. Thanks to my new found family at Run Colorado I don’t think I will have an issue here as they were crucial to my success at the Colfax Marathon. And thankfully here are +/- 15 of us training and traveling together to Utah for the Saint George Marathon. Therefore our weekly runs should be roughly the same distances and we will be able to help each other through the physical and mental ups and downs training brings.
- Keep Calm & Go Running. The worst thing you can do is stress about training or let life stress get in the way of training. Stress will eat you alive and directly impact your performance. And personally the best thing for me to do to let go of a long day is hit the pavement and knock a few miles out!
- Keep track of your training. Make a training schedule, print it out, and stick it where you will see it every day. And then track your training - how did the run go? level of effort? what was the weather like? what shoes did you wear? etc. If you have multiple days of bad runs in a row this allows you to go back and see why and maybe reevaluate how the rest of your week will look. Without keeping track you can easily get in a rut and not know why.
Speaking of training plans here is mine that will carry me through the next two marathons:
15 weeks to go. Considering I already missed yesterday’s run I better get out there!
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