I’m waiting on some key information before I determine whether my Spring 2012 Marathon training program officially starts on Sunday 11/27/2011 or if my training program starts on Sunday 1/15/2012. That piece of information is if I won the Free Entry to the Publix Georgia Marathon over at 26.2 Quest website.
If I have won, then I am going to make that my 2012 Spring Marathon and training will start almost immediately. I usually don’t like the 16 week program because I have found that a training program that long seems to drag on for ages and I have gotten bored with in the past. Now, this was at a time when I was doing a long distance race fairly regularly and while I wouldn’t be in “marathon shape”, I would be familiar with training that my body remembered and I would find myself over training because I would make shorter runs longer.
This caused me to burn out or be over trained for the goal race and have a bad showing on race day. I benefit from the “It’s better to be under trained, then over trained” adage and so I would hand craft 12 week training schedules for me to follow. Only problem with the shorter schedule is that you have to follow it more adamantly, because you can’t miss as many training days or talk yourself into shortening your run from say 10 miles, to 8 miles, eventually to 6 miles… just because.
This time is different. I’m coming off what is a longer rest period for me than what usually happens. My last marathon was last year in November, Flying Monkey Marathon on 11/21/2010. My last long distance races were this spring (Calhouns 10 miler, Strawplains 1/2 Marathon and Whitestone 30k) and with my quad and hamstring pulls of the summer, my running was pretty much zilch.
There was also the mental aspect of running which kept my mileage down. I wasn’t motivated. I was actually not motivated from a “whole Terry” perspective and so not running was a by product of that. Now that things have gone through a mental shift back to a more normal (as normal as normal can get with me) way of thinking, the desire to RUN has come back to life.
If I don’t win the contest, then my training program will be starting on 01/15/2012 for the Flying Pig Marathon.
I don’t think I have a preference for either race. While I have not run the Georgia Marathon, I do have Georgia (2007 Chickamauga Marathon) completed in my journey for running a marathon in all 50 states. I ran the 2009 Flying Pig Marathon, which had the largest crowd size that I had ever experienced at a marathon and wouldn’t mind running through the streets with tons of spectators cheering, just for me.
PLANET3RRY 