July 24, 2012

New York City Marathon Training: Week 2

This morning, I started chatting with a guy at the track about speed work, race plans, etc. He's aiming to BQ in Philly and when I told him my plan to go sub-4 in November, he said, "You can totally do it." New York was his first marathon and his longest run had been 16 miles. He wanted to be realistic and set a goal to go sub-4. He ran a 3:30.

It's obvious that this guy is in shape and based on the fact that he's at the track each week with a bunch of teenagers, I'm guessing he's a track coach. I don't think I'm going to go out and run a 3:30 but he's the first person (with the exception of Gia) who has run New York before and has actually told me that I can totally go sub-4.

So thanks Mr. Track Coach Man.


After our brief chat, I proceeded to have one of the best workouts I've had in awhile and came home on such a runners' high that I didn't think I'd ever come down from it. Until I looked at my Garmin splits and realized that instead of running my 800s in the minute/second equivalent of my marathon goal time, I ran them at marathon pace. So instead of 5 800s at 3:50, this is what my 800s looked like.

*Garmin Connect wasn't working today and after sitting around waiting for 4 hours for my splits to load, I'm just typing them manually*

3:54, 4:17, 4:21, 4:20, 4:30 - Yea, and I actually tried to run SLOWER to hit my MGP.

Crash and Burn.

I was so frustrated. Then I took a cold shower and got over it. I'm not going to stress myself out over every bad run or every workout I miss this training cycle. It just creates bad energy that spills over into your next run and creates a domino effect leading to a string of bad runs and I'm just not going to let that happen this training cycle.

So let's recap:

Total Mileage Last Week: 18
Missed Workouts: 1, Food Poisoning derailed my long run
Trouble Spots: None
Planned Mileage This Week: 30-35

I'm obviously bummed about missing my planned long run of 10 miles but I'm not too concerned. It would have been my 3rd 10-miler in 3 weeks so the base I've built up allows room for a missed long run early on. I just need to make sure I'm on track this week, especially after royally screwing up this morning's workout.

Last week, I mentioned a few things I'm doing differently this training cycle compared with my last few. One other thing I'm doing, is giving my planned mileage a range, rather than a set number. It's a lot easier to aim for 30-35 miles/week rather than 32 so I think that's going to work in my favor.

So, there we have it! Week 1 is in the books and Week 2 is under way! I've got a 5k race this weekend which I'm super excited about...I PRd my last 5k by 6 seconds but came just 3 seconds shy of breaking 25:00 so that's the plan for this weekend! Wish me luck!


Are you training for anything? How's your training shaping up?

2 comments:

  1. It's way to early to be stressing over the numbers, your body needs time to get back in the swing of things and get used to the plan. I bet in one month your splits will be perfect, if not faster. Week 1 and done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. This training cycle I have a weekly range as well and it works really well for me. God luck at the 5k this weekend!!

    ReplyDelete

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