Happy New Training Program!
Hope everyone had a good holiday season. I spent mine doing pretty much what I wanted, and that did not include running. I, for once, listened to my body and decided that I deserved and probably needed a bit of a break. So, this being the new year and having already signed up for the Big Sur Marathon, I went out for my first run in about a week. After spending Christmas week in Oregon (sorry about the Rose Bowl Ducks) it felt good to be running in 70 degree weather.
Most of you other bloggers have already posted your end-of-year recaps and your plans/resolutions for the coming year. I have not done much of that, and won’t this year. I’m happy to have capped off last year with a marathon and my ultimate goal for this year is to prepare myself to do the same race next December November and kill the course. It killed me this year and now it’s my turn.
I have also decided to try a new training plan for the Big Sur marathon. I am not anticipating a PR there, and therefore have less to lose by switching things up. I bought the Runner’s World Run Less Run Faster book some time ago and am going to follow their plan. I feel as though I need some help figuring out the whole tempo/track workout thing and am going to give this plan a shot. The idea is that you run fewer runs each week, but you run them harder and supplement the drop in mileage with cross training. The point is not to “train” less. They believe that you can, in fact, work your body harder with their program because you take some of the stress off your legs because of the cardio work. We’ve got a new little training room at the office that I can take advantage of and I’m looking forward to seeing how I’ll respond to the FIRST program. I officially start on Monday and plan to track progress here so stay tuned! And, if you have experience with this program, leave a comment. I’d love to hear about it.
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Happy New Year, Drew.
Being an ex-Ohioan, I enjoyed watching OSU win the Rose Bowl.
I believe Charlie over at shoreturtle.com used the FIRST program. You may want to get in touch with him.
http://www.shoreturtle.com/blog
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:07 am
Interesting. Not sure what direction my training will take (other than forward). Happy New Year!
January 6th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Actually, you should probably expect to break yout PR if you stick to the plan. It’s the best way to gain speed and lower your times without feeling beat up by high mileage. I am 41 and ran my first two marathons in 3:54 and 3:50, then switch to FIRST halfway in prep of my third one and lowered my time to 3:37. I trained with FIRST for SBI and again lowered my time to 3:30 - eventhough I ran it with a cold and suffered a lot on the last 5 miles, because I was not prepared for the hills. The only disadvantage is to figure out your target pace at the beginning; also the long runs are really long and you go pretty fast into very long runs - the plan has 5 20 miles ones. But I think it eally works. Good luck !
January 6th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
I love the FIRST program. Allows plenty of time for other activities. Happy New Year.