I went for a short half-hour run this morning. I’m still not back at 100% health. It’s really annoying. I’ve got this perpetual feeling that I can’t quite clear my throat, and it makes it difficult to breathe easily when I’m running.
I’ve started planning my events for the rest of the year. Here’s what I’ve got:
- July 27 – Bay Run (7km)
- August 10 – City 2 Surf (14km)
- September 21 – Sydney Running Festival (9km or 21km)
- October 12 – Melbourne Half Marathon (21km)
Here’s my question: How the heck do I train for these? Do I just follow a training plan for the half-marathon and do the other events as I come to them? Hal Higdon‘s “novice” plan for the Half-Marathon (which I used before) goes for 12 weeks, while Jeff Galloway‘s “timed goal” plan goes for 15. (At least, I think it does. It also includes two weeks past your goal event.) If I use the Galloway, I’d need to start by June 23rd at the latest. What do I do between now and then? Or I guess I could start now and stretch out the plan by another three weeks. Will I be overtraining for the race then? I’d really like to hear from any other runners how they’d approach planning out these next five months…
Also: Congratulations to my stepfather Joe, who ran his first 5K race in a long time this past week! And my mom’s going to do a 5K walk with him next week. I’m really glad that I could inspire them to get out there.
5 responses
Here’s one opinion (worth what you pay for it): I’d continue running 3 – 5 times a week (depending on how much you’re cross training), varying distance and intensity, similar to what you’ve been doing, just back off those weekly long runs until you get a few months out from the longer races and then follow the training plan of your choice.
I like to do a weekly long run of ~ 7 miles or so even when I’m not training for anything in particular; it makes it pretty easy to ease into half-marathon training.
This is, of course, if you’re having fun running and not feeling burned out physically or mentally.
Sounds like a fun winter of racing ahead!
That’s kinda what I was thinking. I actually put the dates into a Google calendar today and then filled in the runs from the Galloway schedule. I figured I’ll spend the next few weeks just doing what I’ve been doing before beginning the ramp-up. It actually lines up pretty nicely with the events, seeing as how they increase with distance over the winter. I’m hoping that will keep me fired up about the training process too. 🙂
When I did the Sydney, the City to Surf fell at a really convenient time. I increased long runs by 10% each week, and the City to Surf was meant to be about 14km.
I was considering doing both the Sydney, and Melbourne. (100% on the Melbourne, iffy on Sydney.) If I did this, I would train for Sydney, then have a few days to recover, and then attempt to maintain my fitness for the Melbourne. (weekly mileage of three 8km runs and a 15km.)
Another option for the extra weeks is to repeat a week’s schedule here and there. This won’t lead to overtraining – that should only happen if you increase your mileage too fast.
If you’ve got three or four extra weeks, space them out evenly through the existing schedule, and just repeat the preceding week. To make them a bit more interesting, you could make those extra weeks line up with a race, or drop one or two sessions from that week and instead schedule yourself a time trial: 5km, say. (e.g for the Higdon schedule, do a time trial on the Saturday, and then make your Sunday long run more of a recovery run.)
Also, dunno if you’ve come across this useful little tool, but for working out a good training (and indeed time trial) pace, the McMillan calculator is invaluable.
On my schedule, the City 2 Surf falls on a 10.5 mile run. 14km is nearly 9 miles, so I figure it’s close enough (especially as I’ll presumably be pushing harder than normal). So that works out pretty conveniently.
I wondered about doing the back-to-back halves… I’m iffy on it too. I feel more confident about training for Melbourne and doing the 9K in Sydney instead. It’ll only be my second half; I don’t need to kill myself doing two in a month. 🙂