I have come close to a BQ a couple of times in the past year but nowhere near the pr but with good weather I think I would have been close at Myrtle Beach this year. Within a couple of days after that race I had decided to go forward with this plan, and I have been thinking about what I need to add or subtract from what I am currently doing to push it to another level.
First thing of course is to drop the ultra's so I can be doing the training on fresh legs and a body not worn down from the long races.
Over the past several years my mileage has been fairly consistent with just shy of 50 miles per week. I am ahead of that pace already this year. I hope to build from that to at least 60 per week and if things go well I'd really like to get into the 70 per week range at least part of the time. At least during the summer I will be padding the miles with adding a couple of doubles each week with some morning runs to supplement the normal afternoon runs.
As far as the types of workouts I'll be doing, the stuff I did over this past Winter seemed to be working really well. The 4-5 mile tempo runs at 10k to 10 miler pace seemed to be very effective. And lots of marathon and half marathon pace runs. I really enjoyed the hybrid workouts I made up on the fly. They were tough but made me tough mixing tempo and race pace stuff into the same workout. and of course mile repeats and some 800's too. I like to do a wide variety of stuff to keep it fresh and work on all facets of my running.
I will also be adding a little more hill work especially in the next few weeks of June and July. I like variety here too. I do some max effort 400 hills and some longer but more relaxed pace too and as part of my speedwork will be doing some short hill sprints. I also will be doing more strides a couple of times a week on my regular runs. I do these every now and then but have been inconsistent.
And of course the cross-training. Over the past year and a half now I have been alternating core and body weight workouts at least 6 days a week and adding some free weights about every fourth day. I plan to continue that but will be tweaking it a little bit too. I plan to add some more lower body stuff like lunges and squats and dead lifts and I'm thinking of adding circuit training workout in place of one of the others once a week. We'll see how that goes.
So first up after finishing up this recovery week from the Boogie I will be getting the mileage back to normal, adding a couple of doubles and began hitting the hills and adding more strides. Next race is Grandfather Mountain Marathon so now is a good time to get strong on the hills. I will probably make a decision on the fly at GMM on just how I plan to run it. If I feel good in the early miles and the weather is a little better than the past two years I may try to go sub 4. Otherwise I'll just have some fun and use it as a long training run.
After GMM the focus will be on the race pace workouts with the first real test coming at The Erie Marathon at Presque Isle on Sept 14th. I hope the weather will cooperate and I can attempt to get a BQ and see how close I am to the pr The big target is at Wrightsville Beach next March 22nd but that is a long way off. I'll keep you updated of course with the training and racing in the meantime.
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