Peter's Crazy CIM Marathon Adventure
With my 2014 triathlon season behind me, and with Matt Aaronson as my inspiration, I am embarking on an 8 week marathon adventure to attempt to qualify for Boston 2016. I am starting this thread as a place to track my progress and keep me motivated. Any suggestions or advice will be much appreciated! I am going to go with the EN advanced balanced marathon plan which is 4-5 runs per week, in the 40-50 mpw range, 2 one hour rides per week, and 1 swim on Fridays. I actually enjoy swimming as of late and I think its good for my legs for some recovery. The next 4 weeks are critical with long runs of 16, 16, 18, and finally 20. After these 4 weeks the weekly mileage stays about the same but the long run will reduce. I also plan to take recovery very seriously. I will be doing yoga at least once a week as well as lots of stretching and core exercises. Because of the reduced swimming I should also be getting more sleep.
The race is the California International Marathon which is a net downhill race in hopefully very cool weather. The goal is 2:59:59 which is about a 6:52 pace. I will be shooting for 6:45s on my watch on race day. My vdot is 56 and was validated in a 10 mile race about a month ago which I did at a 6:11 pace. My only other marathon experience is the one Ironman I did back in late June and my run split was 3:32.
I have calculated that I have 36 runs between now and the race, this morning was run #1 of 36. It should have been an easy run with strides but it was at 94% humidity so it ended up being a little rough (amazing that 94% humidity at 60 degrees is still painful). I also raced two days ago so perhaps I am still recovering just a bit.
The only modification I am going to make is a Turkey Trot 5k on Thanksgiving. That day was supposed to be a lot of Z5 work anyway. I will have to see how I feel at that point to gauge how hard to run.
Wish me luck! I am going to need it...
The race is the California International Marathon which is a net downhill race in hopefully very cool weather. The goal is 2:59:59 which is about a 6:52 pace. I will be shooting for 6:45s on my watch on race day. My vdot is 56 and was validated in a 10 mile race about a month ago which I did at a 6:11 pace. My only other marathon experience is the one Ironman I did back in late June and my run split was 3:32.
I have calculated that I have 36 runs between now and the race, this morning was run #1 of 36. It should have been an easy run with strides but it was at 94% humidity so it ended up being a little rough (amazing that 94% humidity at 60 degrees is still painful). I also raced two days ago so perhaps I am still recovering just a bit.
The only modification I am going to make is a Turkey Trot 5k on Thanksgiving. That day was supposed to be a lot of Z5 work anyway. I will have to see how I feel at that point to gauge how hard to run.
Wish me luck! I am going to need it...
0
Comments
Looking at a 56 VDOT on AttackPoint, it indicates you could potentially run 2:53. So, maybe getting the BQ is very doable even with the bike but I'd still be cautious about fatigue and recovery late in the build.
Frequency does a great job of building base and durability. Yes you absolutely need quality tempo and threshold miles to make you faster or keep your fast. Thing is, I don't think you need to push the pace beyond where you currently are. You need to build durability and endurance to avoid the late mile slow down.
just my $0.02
My short answer is to aim at running 6 days per week for the next couple weeks by filling in with 30-60 minutes of EP miles. No time/pace goals, just easy miles and no hard efforts for the frequency runs.
If your fitness is good, keep working the hard runs and make them count. Avoid moderate effort runs. When you cannot hit your paces, shut it down and call it a day.
Make the hard runs hard, and the easy runs easy.
And lastly, be cautious of adding more than 10-15% to your mileage per week. That is often the cause of injury.
Peter,
I used to tri in the summer, then go full-time marathoning in the fall. Once I switched to year-round biking, my marathon builds got easier and I stopped getting injured. May have just been the run durability I had built, but I gave the credit to the biking and enjoyed the weekly break from running. If you were a vDOT 50 like some of us mere mortals, I would say you'll need to be vigilant about keeping the speed work intense and the miles high. But if you smartly build up into the low 40's with some Z4 stuff while staying healthy, you will easily BQ. It's a bucket list achievement, and I thought the race was way cooler than I had even imagined (I'll sneak in another BQ run in the next few years while R isn't looking), but that big April day did have a negative, downstream effect on my early summer tri training and racing.
I, of course, tend to tilt toward the "do cool sheet while I still can" end of the spectrum. Just my $0.02.
Mike
Again, just my 0.02
As I've also learned in the early part of the seasons, bike fitness translates great to run fitness, but it doesn't help with the muscular adaptation of running. The reverse is NOT true though, running fitness doesn't do much to translate to bike fitness.
- 5x per week running is the minimum
- Biking doesn't build run endurance...great for maintaining fitness but isn't going to help you run miles 18-26 at 6:50 pace
- Swim if you like and have time, but likewise it won't help you run the later miles fast
- Don't worry about your FTP. If you remember, last year I took 18 weeks off the bike to train for my first marathon. I got back up to my old FTP and set PR bike splits this year. Btw, I rebuilt the bike essentially from March to June in under 12 weeks since I had an injury that sidelined me Jan/Feb.
Like you, I did compressed training for Chicago this year, only 7 weeks. I used my own plan, screenshot is here: http://members.endurancenation.us/Forums/tabid/57/aft/16495/Default.aspx
I executed that plan almost exactly although several days had to shuffle. Also I did a 23-miler on the week that was supposed to be 20. Oh, and I totally missed the 16-mile long run at the end of the third-last week. I did do biking 2x/week (only missed one ride). One ride of 60' with MS 5x3'(3')@110% of FTP and one ride of 75' structured as 15' W/U, 15'@low z3, 15'@high z3, then 2x8'(2')@z4 then 8' @z3 to finish. So they were not insignificant bike workouts. I put them on easy run mileage days typically so I usually did have 2 complete off-days.
I just finished week 1 and it went really well. I hit all the paces in all of the workouts. Yesterday was 16 miles that had 8 miles easy, 4 miles at marathon pace and 4 miles at threshold pace. This first long run was a great confidence booster because all of that averaged out to a 6:52 pace which is exactly my goal marathon pace!
My original idea was to take the first 6 miles a bit slow (6:50-7:00) and then try to hold 6:40 through mile 20 and see what happens.
Pace group or do this thing on my own??
"do you want to have someone drag you to a 2:59 or ...
... do you want to see what you are capable of in terms of not only finish time but the execution skills to get it done?"
I am sure the pacer is good and can get you what he says and if things don't go well you can blame him. OTOH if you go it alone, you will be the one to take credit or blame. I say show us your EN ninja execution skills..... and pull off a sub 2:55!
If you think you have a hope of running sub-2:55 (your training paces suggest it is quite possible but far from assured) then messing with the pace group even for a bit is going to put that out of reach and instead I'd suggest you start at 6:45-ish for 5k then quickly get to the mid-6:20's for the rest of the first half to cross the halfway at 1:25:00-1:26:30.
I finished week 3 today with a key long run. The run called for 18 miles with 6 a bit slower than race pace, 9 at race pace, and then 3 faster than race pace. Boy was this run tough! Today was cold and rainy, 6 miles in I was having a real mental struggle with finishing this one off, but I hunkered down and got it done. I am a bit behind on sleep because of Halloween festivities. The last 3 miles sucked. My problem isn't cardiovascular, it is all my legs. My hip flexors get tired, my right IT band is tight, and my brain just can't make them move! The 9 miles at race pace were all around 6:40.
My heart rate averaged 163 and maxed out at 170, which for me is pretty low. I max out at 194. It also stayed pretty steady at about 165 for the duration of the 9 miles which is a good sign.
I am looking forward to having a rest day tomorrow and this coming recovery week.
This past week I made a lot of progress in improving my IT-Band. Here is what I did, but not sure what actually helped.
Stetching, Ice, Hip/Glute exercies including leg raises on my side and clamshells, glute bridges, flamingos, and other stuff I learned in physical therapy. Tumeric pills 3x a day, foam roller, massage, alternated different types of shoes, sacrificed a goat.
This next week is the last solid week of training before the real taper. Thankfully the next long run is only 16 miles.
I just found out that the on course drink is nuun, which is electrolytes only, no calories! I have been training with perform and assuming that the on course drink would be some similar sports drink. The sodium content of nuun is pretty similar to perform, but I will be missing out on calories. Should I just go with the nuun and have an additional gel on the run? On my last run which was 20 miles, I took in 105 calories of perform and 3 gels.