I am thinking seriously about adopting the minimalist 3-days-per-week marathon training plan from Runner's World. I was figuring out my FIRST training paces based on my last 10K race in which I finished in 1:03:24.
But I didn't actually write any of it out - I was just figuring out the paces partly in a spreadsheet but mostly in my head.
Then yesterday I went over to the track thinking I'd try to see how I did on four 1-mile repeats. I had a 2:20 lap/9:20 mile pace in mind for repeats for some dumb reason. Which, in retrospect, makes absolutely no sense at all, because my one mile PR right now is 9:23. And I finished a 5-mile track workout just 2 days prior.
So I managed ONE 9:46 mile, at a maximal effort level. And limped around the track for another few miles in the 12-minute range.
This is what happens when I don't do my usual meticulous planning! Winging it just doesn't work! Back to the drawing board. . . . Yeah, I could pay a coach to do the math for me, but I trust the calculations more if I do them myself. And then write down my answers, circled.
6 comments:
I went to the Runner's world site and used the training pace calculator. I can get the miles but needed to know how to run them.
Yeah, I've used that too and it's a great tool! These paces are somewhat faster, though. Too fast for me, maybe!
Hype and spam.
And you know what you are capable of doing realistically. Having been around a while, I always think back to things that worked way back when and try to adopt them back into my training now, but on a much reduced pace scale. One thing that seemed to work well, and made sense overall if you want to go minimalist, was a 4 day a week routine: three runs a week and one long run of 10-12 miles, building from there. Ideally, a minimalist maintenance routine would be 6 miles, 3 times a week, and one 10-12 mile. This would allow time to do "triathlon" stuff other days. Sigh, I wish I could get up to even half that. Let me know if you come up with an ideal schedule. I'm working on just getting in a 3 mile interval workout as being my big workout this week: 3 x 1 mile with walk breaks between at whatever speed I can maintain right now without pushing it.
Nancy,
I feel your pain. Ran my first HM in October. I found out the hard way with speed workouts. When you overdo it, you can really damage the rest of your training week (fatigue or worse-injury). I ran one too hard in August. I was all proud of my "superfast" pace. The next day(s) I felt like I was hit by a truck.
Anyway, I used the McMillan calculator for my intervals - plugged in the time of a recent 5k race (and it worked fine when I actually got smart and followed it, ha ha).
First, congratulations on the tolerance. That comment from Mark wouldn't have made it past my first check of the e-mail. At least it's minimally related to athletics. Most of my spam comments are for complete garbage.
As for the pace situation, are you seeking a target pace, or just trying to figure out training levels?
I spent most of last winter training at what I considered a very slow pace. Within about 8 weeks of my first "A" race, I added some speedwork (probably too much). That groundwork allowed me to shave 45 minutes off of my marathon PR. (Well, that and something like 25 pounds lost).
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