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Posts Tagged :

Boston Marathon

Boston Marathon Week – 3

1024 919 Christo Landry
Goals Target Actual
Mileage
41 miles
41.0 miles
Long Run
12
12.0
Secondary Workout
Tempo 15 min
Tempo 15 min
Primary Workout
Fartlek 15 min
Fartlek 15 min
Strides
2
1
Drills (Abs/Back/Hips)
3
1
Weight
152

Week 3: April 26th – May 2nd

First two workouts of the training cycle! They actually felt really good. First up was the 15 min tempo on Tuesday. To set the stage for talking about workouts and how I look at them, take a look at these pages real fast.

Workout Basics

Tempos

Fartleks

For the tempo I used the smaller loop near my house.  It’s ~0.8 miles around and the reason I used it instead of the larger ~1.5 mile loop is that I wanted something flatter & easier for my first tempo.  In general a relatively flat loop is good for tempos as it’s much easier to keep even pressure on your aerobic system on flatter terrain than it is on hillier terrain.  Imagine trying to keep even pressure on your aerobic system when you’re going up a steep hill and then coming down the other side.  You’d have to slow down going up the hill as you’re working harder and then fly going down the hill to make sure you’re working hard enough, not something you want to be doing often in a tempo. 

Now while I used the flatter loop for this tempo and plan to stay on flatter loops for a good bit in this training cycle, Boston isn’t flat.  So towards the end of the training cycle you’ll see me transition to running quite a few hills in my workouts and my normal runs.  Why wait to the last moment (which is somewhere around one and a half to two months out)? Simple, I detest hills, probably because I am not good at running them.

The tempo itself went well but it was readily apparent that I have not worked out recently.  My legs felt capable enough at the pace I was going, 5:23 / mile, but there was a tightness to my stomach from not using my lungs at capacity for a while.  When I’m in the middle of a training cycle, it’s never my breathing holding me back (unless we’re in the middle of pollen season in the spring).  I expect that I’ll feel this less and less as I go into the season as my aerobic system gets back up to par. 

I used the big loop for the fartlek (2 on / 1 off x 5) as hills don’t matter nearly as much fartlek route selection as they do in tempo route selection.  You just want to stay away from anything really steep, other than that you’re good.  It was nice to get after things, but I can tell that my legs are missing a great deal of strength and power.  It was a workout where I had to be careful in my apportionment of effort so that I didn’t go out too hard on the first on section (very easy to do when you’re not used to fartleks).  My legs are clearly far away from the time when I can just start hammering from the gun and know that they’ll recover enough on the off’s that I can go right back at it.  That’ll come. 

Paces for the on’s were faster than the tempo, as they should be.  Started around 5:17, which is slow but it’s also my first one and it’s uphill.  Dropped the pace down to 4:56 pace by the third one as that was downhill/flat, then it was back to the 5:00’s for the rest of the slightly uphill segments.

Going forward in training physically it’s just a waiting game: do the workouts and eventually you’ll get in shape.  The biggest thing that I can actively work on during these early season workouts is my mental game.  What that means to me is getting to the point where I’m comfortable with workout pain, where I’m not constantly checking my watch to see how far I’ve gone and how much I’ve got left in a workout.  The goal is to achieve a state of being able to check out mentally while at the same time working at the appropriate effort and executing the workout as intended.  The less mental effort that you exert earlier in a workout or a race, the more that you’ll have for later on when it’s in higher demand.  It’s very useful skill and all it takes is practice.

Upcoming Week: 44 miles, 13 mi long run, 19 min Tempo, 19 min Fartlek.

This is just a continuation of the previous week.  It’s the standard, three mile increase to overall miles, one mile to the long run and four minutes to each workout.  Nothing fancy is needed in the early season, just a steady diet of the basics as I increase my body’s capacity for work and mileage in a sensible manner.  These numbers will get big soon enough.

Boston Marathon Week – 2

1024 919 Christo Landry
Goals Target Actual
Mileage
38 miles
38.4 miles
Long Run
11
11.1
Strides
2
0
Drills (Abs/Back/Hips)
3
1
Weight
152

Week 2: April 19th – 25th

This was a good week getting back on the path of a real training cycle.  The things that stood out to me were that I got out of bed and got my runs done on multiple days when in the past months (without a training plan) I would have told myself I would run at lunch instead and then not run.  In addition to that I have started to create set paths for runs, instead of making it up on the fly and naming the runs.

The reason for this (other than being able to refer to them easily) is that it makes the run easier for me mentally.  Having to create a route on the fly means that I can’t fully zone out as I need to constantly be making the small decisions of where to go and how far that would be.  It means I don’t have to consistently convince myself to run further when I don’t feel like running or I’m having a bad day.  It’s much easier to simply tell yourself that this is the route you are taking from the start and that you have to finish it and more enjoyable as you’re not fighting yourself at every turn.  This was a big help to me on Monday when I didn’t feel great at the start of the run and would have cut the run short if I didn’t have a preset route to run.

This being the second week of training, I haven’t had any workouts yet as my body needs to get reaccustomed to running five to six days a week.  You want to avoid multiple changes to your training routine at once as that increases your injury risk and this was my first change.  Since this was the second week, I should have started strides but I was lazy and didn’t.  Next up comes adding in workouts.  Since I haven’t done workouts for a sustained period of time since last summer and my training cycle is a very long one, I’ll be starting slowly to give my body a chance to adjust and to make sure that the workouts don’t get too big too soon in the training cycle.

Upcoming Week: 41 miles, 12 mile long run, 15 min tempo, 15 min fartlek

Boston Marathon Week – 1

1024 919 Christo Landry
Goals Target Actual
Mileage
35 miles
35.0 miles
Long Run
10
9.6
Drills (Abs/Back/Hips)
3
1
Weight
152

Week 1: April 12th – 18th

Back in training!  And I ran five days this week!  Which about sums up the goals for this week, get back to steady running and get in a long run!  There’s nothing special about the first two weeks of the training cycle, it’s just getting your body adjusted to continuous running and getting yourself adjusted to the routine of getting out the door on a consistent basis.  The biggest thing that you have to watch out for on your first week back is that you don’t get too excited and run too much.  Not only would that increase your injury risk it also make you get too high in mileage too soon.  Anyway, that’s what they training plan is there for, you know how many miles you have to run in a week which can keep you from going too far or not far enough!

Upcoming Week: 38 miles, 11 mile long run

Boston Marathon Announcement!

1024 919 Christo Landry

Boston Marathon

Since I retired at the end of 2018 my training has been sporadic at best.  I had a good couple months last year over the summer with the UNC Charlotte guys as they started their XC training, but other than that it’s been a workout here, a long run there and nothing with any real purpose.  So to ensure I actually train for this marathon (as my wife is worried, rightfully so, that I would postpone it to the point where I wouldn’t get proper training in) I decided that I would turn this training cycle into a, “How To” series on training for a marathon when you don’t have the time professional athletes have to dedicate to running and recovery.

Training Cycle

So how do you start planning your training cycle? The first thing that I do is pick out the big race at the end of the cycle that I’ll be peaking for.  Here, it’s Boston.  Then I pick out the races I want to run along the way.  I recommend at least one race about 4-6 weeks out from your marathon (it can be closer if it’s not a marathon) as nothing prepares you for race pain other than race pain.  And while you can have a great race going into your peak race without racing, the chances of you having a great race increase if it isn’t also your rust buster race as well.   When planning races another thing to keep in mind is the spacing between races.  Three weeks is the minimum I shoot for but there are times when there are races two weeks apart I’ve just had to do in the past.  When you race more often it’s hard to fit training in between recovery from races, and then the light workouts leading up to the next race.  For this training cycle I currently have three races planned starting in June and ending in September before the Boston Marathon in October.

Race Selection

After I’ve picked out my races the next thing I do is plan out my: weekly mileage, long run lengths, and workouts for each week of the training cycle.  This is what I do for the athletes that I coach, what my coach did for me when I was a professional runner, and what I need to do when I’m coaching myself.  When you’re coaching yourself, it’s easy to argue with the coach during the middle of a run.  This not only distracts you and makes that run harder as you have to keep telling yourself not to make it easier, but it can make you second guess all your decisions and lose your confidence.  If I take the time to thoughtfully plan out my training cycle ahead of time then I know it’s the right thing for me and that I need to stop being a sissy on the runs and just go out there and get things done instead of complaining.  It makes life so much easier.

Goals

Lastly I set goals for myself.  I try and make them obtainable but at the same time a reach so that when I hit them I’m proud of the achievement and I’m not just checking off a box.  For this training cycle I’ve set A and B goals for a couple different categories.
Goals A B
Marathon Time
Sub 2:20
Sub 2:25
Drills (Abs/Back/Hips)
3 x week
2 x week
Weight
146
148

Marathon Time:  My personal best for a marathon is 2:14:30 which I ran at the Chicago Marathon in 2014.  So sub 2:20 is pretty close to that.  There are two reasons I think I’m capable of getting there on my reduced training plan (reduced from what I did as a pro).  First, as a pro I never ran a “complete” marathon, I would get cramps in my hamstrings that prevented me from maintaining my speed past 19-22 miles.  It’s a problem I wasn’t able to solve as a pro but I believe (doesn’t everyone) that I was in much better shape that what my PR shows.  That means that 2:20 is closer to 10 minutes away from what kind of shape I was in as a pro than 5 minutes.  Second, after a couple months of fartleks and tempos last summer I ran a 2:30 marathon while running the first 18 miles at 5:55 pace and then closing hard.  Not the ideal way to run your fastest time, however, I did the first 18 with a college athlete and I wasn’t going to ask him to go harder than he would on a normal long run as I didn’t want to disrupt his training.  That leads me to believe that if I train specifically for a marathon with a longer cycle and better optimized pacing strategy (ala run anywhere close to even) I should be able to run much faster than 2:30.

Abs/Back/Hip Exercises: These each have a specific purpose.  The back drills, while they help my core yes, are mainly so that I sleep better at night.  Since I stopped running as a pro and going to gym as part of that training I’ve discovered that I’m having back pain at night due to a lack of back muscles.  I’m also lazy so I haven’t been doing that and my sleep has suffered as a consequence (gotta love self-sabotage).  So, back drills equals more & better sleep equals better recovery and a happier me.  Hip dills keep my hips stronger and in alignment (which is a chronic issue for me) and thus keeps the knee pain away.  Abs exercises strengthen my psoas, something I’ve had issues with in the past and keep the pot belly from bulging out which makes the wife happy.

Weight: When you run ridiculous amounts of mileage (my PR was 150 in a week) you tend to burn a lot of calories.  There would be a 10-14 day period when my body was adjusting to the highest mileage of a cycle where I would have to weigh myself at night to make sure I had eaten enough that I would be able to sleep through the night without waking up starving.  And yes that’s after a huge dinner, a pint of ice cream and a bowl of cereal.  I would have to force myself to eat more calories.  It was a tough life and I would love to have those problems again.  As high mileage runners know, you can eat with impunity and if you stuff your face too much on any given day all you have to do is eat responsibly for a day or two and you’re back to normal.  The downside is that when you stop running all those miles for good, well there’s quite the adjustment to be had in regards to your relationship with food.  While I have made that transition more successfully than some, my excess weight at this point has gone straight to my belly (beer belly shape and then ribs showing on the side) and it’s something I’m not that I’m particularly fond of and this is a great opportunity to rid myself of it.  The goal is set at slightly above my old training weight of 144-145 (my racing weight at the end of the season somehow would be slightly less) so I think that it’s an achievable goal.

Throughout the training cycle I will endeavor to explain what I did each week and the reasoning behind it.  The goal is to give you the “why” to the training and not just the “what” so that you can take this information and applying it to your running.  Then again if that’s not for you and you’d like me to do it instead, well then sign up for a free coaching consultation and we’ll talk!

Upcoming Week: 38 miles, 11 mile long run