Marathon Training Plan Tweaks

Today marks day one of marathon training for the Twin Cities Marathon, take 2! I'm again training myself, although I am realizing that how I coach myself is not how I coach other runners, and I could probably stand to have someone who can comfortably tell me no when I have a harebrained idea, but that's neither here nor there I guess.

I've created a training plan that is pretty similar to last year's, with some tweaks. Last year's plan started after the 4th of July. Last year I did Grandma's half marathon, took some time to recover, and then had some cranky knee flare up. Last year's was planned at 15 weeks, but ended up at 13 weeks. This year's will be 16 weeks.

I also have one additional 20 miler, as I have an extra couple of weeks of training. It's always so brutally hot training through the summer for a marathon that it's nice to have a bonus 20 miler for confidence if the others are just brutal. I did discover on my long run this weekend that I'll likely have to do 1 or 2 of them on my own. AHH!!! Fingers crossed I can line someone up for part of them at least.

My last tweak is some additional hill work. Last summer, I (or should I say Chris) did a good job of incorporating hilly routes into our Monday night runs. I felt so strong on the hills of TCM, that I want to do that again, but I'm also planning some hill specific repeats for some strength based workouts.

I'm really excited to dive into marathon training and do the WORK to get that marathon PR in 16 weeks!