Musings on my Quad Cities Marathon Training

I had initially intended to do a weekly update on my marathon training and report on how I was progressing. I found the accountability of recording my Sugar Detox this Spring very empowering to motivate me to blog. I had hoped it would carry on, but it only continued with blog entries that I wrote in my mind, not on the computer. So this is an overview glance at my training this summer.

Some time back in the Spring, Jen and I decided that since the Quad Cities Marathon fell on my birthday, it would be a nice combination to go visit family and run a marathon. It had been almost 7 years since we had seen most of the Iowa family and 15 for some of the Illinois family.

Once I knew that I would be running the marathon, I started thinking about the logistics of a training schedule. Last year, the inaugral Darlington Marathon fell on my birthday and I trained for it during the summer of 2013. As a result, regardless of whether I developed a 12, 14 or 16 week plan, I wasn’t terribly excited about running in the heat of summer.

I decided on the shorter 12 week plan, I mean, why prolong the suffering? The two biggest obstacles for a shorter training period are fitting in the long runs with time for rest and missing any run can be harmful to the overall training regiment. Also, since I didn’t run my normal gamut of races in the Spring, I would, in essence be starting from scratch. I set my  training start date for June 30th.

STRUCTURE
My schedule would  primarily consist of lunch time runs (in the heat) of 2-5 miles of easy, tempo or interval workouts. Long runs would be scheduled for the early mornings and a few of them with a twist, I would set up a run during the week where I ran to work. This would allow more time for the weekend to spend with family. I would also try to avoid running on days that I had Taekwondo class at night, and only run those days when I had a conflict elsewhere.

What has always been a weakness in my marathon training is the mid mileage runs of 6-12 miles. They take longer than what I can do at lunchtime but too short on weekend when time is valuable.

A typical week would be something like this:
Monday: Taekwondo in Evening
Tuesday: ~2 miles Speed work at the Track
Wednesday: Taekwondo in Evening
Thursday: 4 -5 miles Tempo run around Campus/Downtown
Friday: Taekwondo in Evening
Saturday: Long Run in Morning
Sunday: Interval training disquised as Ultimate Frisbee with the guys at church

But that, my friends, was something called “theory”. So here is the reality of my training in the short-short version.

Weeks 1-4 [Jun 30 – Jul 27]

I logged in 9 runs for a total mileage of 37.1 miles in a total time of 5 hours 12 minutes. My longest run was 6 miles on the sand at Myrtle Beach. All but 1 of my runs, which was a Speed workout, were Tempo sessions.

Weeks 5-8 [Jul 28 – Aug 24]
In the second part of my training I logged in 93.7 miles in 13 runs in a total time of 14 hours 6 minutes. The breakdown of my running sessions were 4 Long Run, 1 Speed, and 8 Tempo sessions. The longest run was a 20.5 mile run on Third Creek and surrounding Greenways. This was workout that I had to stop and rest in the shade multiple times because of the heat (~86F with feels like 90+).

Weeks 9-12 [Aug 25 through Sept 22]
As I compose this, I’m not done training, but I don’t expect to get too many more miles in at this point. I logged in 1 Speed, 2 Long and 7 Tempo workouts for a total of 68.9 miles in 10 hours 6 minutes. My longest run was a 23.8 mile run from Farragut out to near West Town Mall and back.

Taekwondo

I ended up running on the same days that I had Taekwondo classes 8 out of the 32 running sessions. Most of these were on Wednesdays when I would run at Lunchtime and then have TKD that evening. When I had run earlier that day,  I found it easier to control my level of exertion during sparring However on days when I didn’t run, usually Mondays, I would be very eager to spar and if I didn’t intentionally start slow I would tire too quickly and be exhausted after the 2nd bout.

In all, I only logged in roughly 200 miles which put me at an average of about 17 miles per week. To give some perspective, a moderate training program (Hal Higdon Intermediate) is typically a total of 550 miles with an average of 33 mile per week. So who knows what will happen!

 

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