Friday, February 18, 2011

Things change so go with the flow

It seems a bit strange to be sitting home this weekend with no race on the calender. For the 1st time since 2005 I am not entered in the Myrtle Beach Marathon and prior to that I had been to Holiday Lake since 2002. But neither one fit the plan for this year with my focus on racing Boston. I am really missing Holiday Lake since it was the site of my first 50K. Even when I started going to MB I could still go and volunteer but then a couple of years ago they started being on the same weekend. This year they happen to be separate again but I am at neither. Another odd thing is that I had not really planned on ever going to MB. I only decided to go in 2005 to pace Karla in her first Marathon a week after I ran the 40 miler at Uwharrie. After that I got talked into trying to qualify for Boston so I targeted MB in 2006 for that attempt. If everything goes to plan next year I will return to Holiday Lake.

So, since I am not racing I'll catch you up on how the training is going. If you read my last race report you know I had a cold the week leading up to it but still had a decent race running only 1.5 minutes slower than at Ocean Isle Beach last month. But then on Monday following the race I was hit with the evil stomach virus that is going around and it knocked me down hard. It took me all week to regain most of my strength but it was until this Wednesday that I finally was able to get back on track with the training. As it turns out if I had to get sick the timing was about right because last week was suppose to be a rest week anyway before moving into the final phase of training. I would prefer to rest some other way.

Anyway, two weeks ago I finished up the speed phase of the training in my modified marathon training plan I put together. Beginning this week with a set of 1/2 mile repeats I have now moved into the stamina phase which will consist of 1/2 mile and mile repeats between now and The Tobacco Road Half Marathon on March 20th. The first workout went very well and tomorrow I will be meeting the ladies for a 20 miler on the ATT race course.

Stay tuned for further updates

3 comments:

(Mary) Shannon Johnstone said...

GO JOEY!! I am so glad to hear your training is ON! I am rooting for you.

Frank Lilley said...

Sounds to me like you are going to be READY!

runjoey said...

Thanks Shannon and Frank. If I'm not ready it won't be from not trying. It's been hard to stay focused on this goal for so long but only 8 weeks to go now.