Snow Day!

A Snow Day means I have time to blog! How bout that?

I am beginning to believe that I can run a 3:30 marathon next month. The workouts are working out and if I am to believe in my training plan, it's doable. The last time I blogged I was talking to you about 1 mile intervals and tempo runs at 5k pace. Well, since then, the training has turned more race specific. This week is my 3rd week of peak training. Next week is a recovery week, then two more weeks of hard training before the taper starts.

So, what does peak training look like for me? This week was a little skewed because I was on call last weekend and ended up working about 27 hours (in addition to the 40 hour work week). Because of that I wasn't able to get my long run in on Sunday and had to run it on Monday. In the plan there are two types of long runs. I had run 18 miles the Sunday prior, but this Sunday called for a marathon pace run.

So, on Monday, I hopped on the treadmill and ran 2 miles warm up, 8 miles at 8:06 and then 2 miles cool down. Then on Wednesday I ran mixed intervals. 3k at 7:48 pace, 2 minutes active recovery (ar), 2k at 7:25 pace, 2 minutes ar, 1k at 7:08 pace, 2 minutes ar and finally .5 miles at 6:52 pace! And then finally, Friday night, I again hopped on the treadmill. (Notice a pattern here?) My Friday workouts are my tempo runs. 1 mile warm up and 7.5 miles at 7:48 pace.

Sunday is a 20 mile run. Am I going to have to treadmill this as well? We are getting greater than 12 inches of snow today, over 7 so far, and then it's only suppose to be a high of 5 tomorrow and very windy. I don't mind running in the cold for 10 or 12 miles, but 20? With a fresh batch of snow that won't be cleared from the side of the road! I'm thinking not!

I'm looking at a few options. I may have a friend that can guest me indoors at a club with an indoor track? If that doesn't work out,  I may run some miles outside then go to the club and finish on the treadmill or I may just run it all on the treadmill.

Treadmill runs are something that has worried me some. Mostly because everybody says that it is easier to run at a faster pace on the treadmill. That's just doesn't seem to be the case for me. I find that I run faster, easier outside on most occasions. What I try to do is mimic outside running while I'm on the treadmill. The incline setting is set at 1% for me as a general rule, but then I decrease and increase it at certain unspecified intervals. So, for example, on Friday I ran at 1% incline for the first 3 miles with an increase to 2% for .3 miles towards the end of that 3 miles. Then I went to .5% for a mile and back to 1% for the next mile. During these times I'll make some short adjustments for a few tenths of a mile. I can feel it when I make the adjustments and find it interesting the .5 and 1% are easiest for me. I'll even have the setting at 0 from time to time to mimic downhill running.

This article has also helped alleviate my concerns about treadmill running.

On my last post, I stated that I would talk about how I go about injury prevention. Sorry that I haven't done that, but that post is in the works and I'll post it soon. It won't be a month!!!

How is your training going? Hopefully most of you are giving you bodies a break and doing other things or simple base training. Do you ever read Joe Friel's blog? He has very good info about base training right now.