Marathon Training officially begins

 Ok sports fans. It's time to get with the plan and be serious about preparing for Tobacco Road Marathon next march. I've used a running journal from day 1 of my running and it is set up like a calendar so my weeks start on Sunday.  This past week was a recovery week from racing the two previous weekends so it was all easy pace stuff.

 Sun: 5 miles easy in Rocky Mount on their greenway 45:02
 Mon: 5 miles easy on the Neuse Greenway 45:31
 Tues: 6 miles not so easy in Umstead. 59:37. I really needed a day off but I was working in Cary and I've been wanting to check out the Cedar Ridge re-route. Probably a bad idea. Felt tired, dead legs.
 Wed: Finally rested
 Thurs: 5 miles at Shelley Lake in 46:37. Still tired and heavy legs.
 Fri: more rest
 Sat: 12 miles along the Neuse in 1:48:16. This was the kick off of building the long runs. I was happy to feel fresh and stayed consistent and finished strong.
 Total of 33 miles.

 In addition to the running I am still doing lots of other workouts. This past week I did two body weight strength, one with weights at the gym,and three 30 minute core sessions. And although I no longer take yoga classes I still have a home practice although I was a bit slack with it this week. I do some yoga as part of my warmups in the strength sessions and at night I spend anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour doing yin yoga 4 or 5 days a week but this week I only did one.

 In the past going into a training plan like this I would usually schedule two speed or tempo type workouts each week but now that I've gotten into the mid 60's I have to face the reality that my recovery times aren't what they used to be and I have to be smarter and more careful. With that, I am only going to be doing one hard , faster quality workout each week and hopefully maximaize results with less chance of injury.

 One thing I have going for me right now is that my daily easy run pace is as fast as I need to run to get a guaranteed spot into Boston 2021. At my age I need 4:05 which is 9:21 pace. But to make sure I get in I want at least  a 5 minute cushion so 4:00 or less is the goal and that's 9:07 pace and my 12 miler was at 9:01. So I really don't need more speed. I just have to build the endurance to hold that for the full 26.2 miles !

 According to the pace charts, in theory I should be able to run about a 3:47 marathon but of course that is taking into consideration that I have put in the long runs. Let me say now, I have no intentions of trying to run that fast in March.  Maybe someday later but #1 priority now is just getting that BQ and once that is taken care of then maybe I will work on that 3:47 again which was my BQ time for the 2016 Boston.

 So for those wanting to follow along here is the coming weeks plan. Mid week is the pace workout.
 1 mile warm up, 3 x 2 miles at 25k race pace (8:30) with 1/2 mile recoveries, 1 mile cool down.
 Long run of 14 miles.
 3 or 4 days of easy runs from 4 to 6 miles.

 Let the fun begin !