Summer Marathon Training Loophole?

Remember when I decided that I wouldn’t be doing a fall marathon [insert 26.2 tears here, please]? I do. I knew I wouldn’t hack the heat trying to do a 3+ hour run. I had concerns about the time commitment in relation to my new school commitment.
Well since making this decision, I’ve been having some serious marathon envy. Turns out everyone and their dog is training for a fall marathon. Yes, I laugh behind their backs (and to their faces) when they plot their 2am wake up times to “beat the heat” to get their runs in, but I was bummed.

On my part 2 of my double run a few weeks ago I had a crazy idea pop in to my head. What if I could run a fall marathon without training through the summer?

LIGHTBULB! (heh heh, this was one of my nicknames growing up)

My half marathon training program is fairly similar to previous training cycles, except my mileage has been beefed up. My weekly mileage will top out close to what it did during my training for Fargo: just shy of 50. With that sort of base, I started to wonder if I could piggy back off my training and have a very VERY short training cycle for 26.2.

There are 6 weeks between goal race A (half marathon) and potential goal race B (marathon). Even if I used the first week post-half as a recovery week, I would have 5 weeks of training—2 weeks of legit training and then a taper. One 17 miler and one 20 miler? Sure. Why not?

No, I won’t be going in to this race with as much pressure on myself to ZOMG MUST SUB 4 OR I’LL DIE attitude, because my training probably isn’t there. But I think that’s a good thing. I bust under pressure. The course is hilly. I’ll have minimal long-long runs. But I still should be able to finally beat my first marathon time of 4:12. Because that’s just annoying, ya know?

The best part is that as soon as I got home from my run that Thursday night, I got out my copy of Advanced Marathoning (thanks again Danielle, running twinsie!) to see what the last 5 weeks of training looked like in comparison to my half training. It seemed doable with some tweakage (no need for any tune up races, more focus on mid-long runs during the week, probably). The book was laying open next to me as I was typing up my blog post.

Kyle came in to my apartment. He looked at me. He looked at the book. He looked back at me…. And then back at the book.

KK: Jerbear (yes he calls me Jerbear about 99% of the time, die of adorableness immediately), Whatcha got your marathon book out for?

Me: Wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll.

KK: Shocker.

And later after I had explained my insanity to him, he casually mentioned that he’d plan to be around very limitedly the 2-3 weeks leading up to the race day. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. Suffice it to say in much less gentler words than he explained them in, “You were a raging bitch when you were tapering!!!” Oh yeah.. that. Apparently I not only forgot the pain and disappointment of 26.2 I also forgot the hell of the taper madness. Smooth move brain.

Who’s coming to Mankato!?!?!?