Monday, January 9, 2012

Brookings Marathon Training

According to Einstein, the definition of insanity is performing the same act and expecting different results.

FYI:  I had this poster on my wall through high school and most of college.  I kind of love it.

In regards to the marathon, I have now completed 4 marathons with roughly the same results.  All 4 attempts have had similar training programs.  Short, 10-14 weeks, because I have serious training A.D.D. and my body has a tendency to break down and most of them have been constructed from the Runners World training programs.  I dabbled with the Pfitz program for Philadelphia, but only the last 5 weeks of it.

For the Brookings Marathon, I'm throwing myself in to it headfirst.  18 weeks of training seems like a long g.d. time to train for one event that'll last less than 240 minutes.  However, I know that my main weakness, other than my ability to stay healthy, is my endurance, so I can use all the concentrated help I can get.

The Pfitz training program breaks the training up in to 4 mesocycles leading up to race day.  Endurance building is a huge focus of the training,  and a majority of the workouts are based on heart rate.  I'll also be putting in a good chunk of miles.  Usually more miles = more broken Jeri, but I'm hoping I've got that under control.  Miles make champions, I think the famous Angry Runner once said.  And while I'll never be a champion at 26.2 i wouldn't mind feeling like one with a monster PR.  I just tallied up the planned miles from today to May 12th, and I have 801.2 miles on deck.  Uff da.  It's go time!

18 weeks starts TODAY!

6 comments:

B. Kramer said...

The only way I've found to improve on marathon performance is to run more miles during training. That's why I gave up on speed work. Good luck with the longer plan. Cheers!

Jordan said...

I never had much success with the RW based plans either. You should be okay with more mileage just make sure to listen to your body if it tells you to back off. Happy winter training!

Anonymous said...

I'm doing a full 18 weeks of training for my March marathon. It does seem like a long time but I'm just taking it a day at a time and letting my body get used to the mileage. I don't have much speed work planned other than one weekly 'basically full out run' and then just making the distances for the days. I just need 14 miles Saturday and have 15 miles planned for this week. Nice and gradual makes a happy Jim!

Katie said...

good grief, 18 weeks IS a long-ass time. I mean. good luck?

Dom and Trey said...

OH, I always get excited when starting a new training program. 18 weeks is what I usually do, but I think the next time I will opt for a shorter plan. Good luck, you've got a lot of miles ahead of you. You can do it!

-dom

Susan said...

I must get rolling on a training plan...I really like Pfitz, but I've gotten injured twice using his program sooo maybe I'm not a Pfitz girl...

ps yay for shorts in January!!