It occurred to me a couple of days ago that since the Umstead 100 miler I have "just " been running. Not that there is anything wrong with that but I think the time has come to get back to training again. Other than a random tempo run or the occasional few mile repeats on the greenway I have not done any speedwork since the Boston Marathon in April 201l. As soon as I ran that I immediately began focusing on the 100 and geared all of my workouts toward running as well as possible there which meant a lot of practice laps on the course.
Looking ahead, my schedule for the year is still mainly focused on ultra's with my biggest goal of running as many miles as possible at the Badgerland 24hr Labor Day weekend and 6 weeks later the Oil Creek 100. One is pancake flat on a track and the other is on single track trail with 19,000 ft of climbing. I will have some specific workouts for each of those as the time draws nearer but they really are quite different.
But that brings me back to the point of this post which is to explain what I mean by training again. Well, in 2005 when my friends prodded me into trying to run a Boston qualifier which was 25 minutes faster than I had ever run a marathon before while I was in the middle of a full ultra schedule ( I did 13 that year) I began the Grand Experiment. Was it possible to train as a marathoner, knock off 25 minutes off my pr while still performing well in the ultra's. Well the answer proved to be yes, I can and in addition to getting the BQ, I set a lot of course pr's and finished some tough 100's over the next year.
Recently while running with one of my Angels, and training partners, 100 miler Amy, she told me her goal now was to back off of the ultra's and focus on running a BQ by next March at Tobacco Road and then do Boston in 2014. It just happens that her qualifying time and mine are the same, 3:40. So I figured, what better way to stay motivated than to try and help Amy achieve her goal and have fun doing the training in the process. My hope is that it will once again bring some speed back for me so I can run some quality marathon times and help with my ultra ambitions over the course of the next year. With the new entrance policy for Boston we really need to run under 3:35 to guarantee getting into the race which means setting a pr for me. To be honest I find that to be very unlikely but miracles do happen. They sure did in 2006.
Stay tuned !
1 comment:
Someone has finally saw the "Light"!We share in the hope of the 3:35,however a 4:20+would be a major disappointment,Good Luck
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