Half Way
Well, here I am at the halfway point in my training. The funny thing about marathon training is there really often isn’t a start date in the traditional sense because people don’t start from scratch, just deciding to start running on day one of training. They’ve been running already, otherwise they really wouldn’t be able to even do the first week of training successfully. In my case there was a number of months of running increasing distances as I recovered from my surgery. The surgery was in November of 2016. in December and January went from a cast to walking. Then I started my ramp-up to training.
- Feb – 7.2 miles
- Mar – 39.6 miles
- Apr – 65.5 miles
- May – 57.6 miles
Training started in June and the mileage doubled.
- Jun – 120.8 miles
- July – 140.1 miles
August is shaping up to be 150+ miles and I expect September to be the same since all my really long runs will be during those two months. October will be less since I will be tapering the mileage as the marathon nears.
Taking the bull by the horns on a HOT day with our Broken Arrow runners!
Racing and Time Trials
One of the important things to calculate in training to race any distance is what is your sustainable pace. To do this it’s good practice to do time trials or races at various distances over the course of your training. This is what I have done recently.
- TU Track 1.5 mile time trial (July) – 11:41, a 7:45 pace. (very hot)
- Maple Ridge 5K (May) – 24:50, a 7:55 pace. (humid and hot)
- Bedlam Run 10K (Aug) – 54:37, an 8:38 pace. (good conditions)
- Tulsa Run 15K (October, before surgery) 1:29:20, a 9:31 pace (I can extrapolate from how I am running post-surgery that I would probably be able to do this race closer to a 9:00 pace)
So, the only distance I haven’t raced recently is a 1/2 marathon. I am contemplating doing one in September just to complete the time trials and get a fuller picture of what I can do. Once I do that I will calculate what looks to be a sustainable marathon pace. Right now it looks like about a 10 minute mile, but I will wait until closer to the race to make a definitive decision on what pace I will run.
After the Bedlam 10K
That is it for now. Feel free to ask any questions or give any comments you want!
In addition, those of you in Tulsa, our 15k running programs starts in less than 2 weeks. We will get you to the Tulsa Run and beyond! contact me if you are interested.
You can read the rest of the series here.
See you running,
Marty