Marathon training: Getting it done!

With the Yakima River Canyon Marathon on April 2 now only six weeks away (yikes!) my marathon training has kicked into high gear. My longest run so far has been 16 miles. I plan to do 15 today and then make the big push to the really long runs. The next few weeks after today call for long runs of 18.5, 17, and 21 miles before beginning my taper.

Originally I’d planned to follow my usual practice of running three times a week (spaced 2-3 days apart), with the long run on either Saturday or Sunday as my schedule permitted. The shorter runs were to have been a combination of steady pace, progression, and hill training (again, as per my usual routine).

However, on this training cycle I noticed that I wasn’t recovering as quickly as I’d like. Specifically, every time I ran on only one day’s rest, something went wrong. I’d be inexplicably slow, or sore, or just unable to relax and run smoothly. Part of the difficulty, I think, was that it can be cold and wet this time of year! My hands and feet always go numb for the first couple of miles, and that does make it tricky to relax and run smoothly. But I couldn’t ignore the fact that on the days when I’d had two days of rest, the cold and damp didn’t seem to slow me down as much as on the days with only one day’s rest.

Once I saw the pattern, I had no choice but to reluctantly acknowledge it and adjust my schedule accordingly. So now I’m running only every third day, which means that for two out of three weeks, I’m only running twice. This, of course, means that every single run means more and must be approached and executed more carefully.

So far this new strategy is working well. I’ve increased my mid-week runs by a couple of miles so that my weekly total mileage is not that much less than I’d originally planned, and that’s all going well. In addition, I walk for at least an hour and a half (usually 5-7 miles) on almost all of my “rest days.” I walk rather briskly and I can feel the benefits of that gentle effort in my leg strength on running days.

Overall I’m much more confident about the progress of my training than I was at six weeks prior to my aborted marathon last October. At this point, I’m optimistic that I’ll complete my training strong and ready for a good race. No matter what ultimately happens, I expect to enjoy this marathon.

One step at a time!