The PLAN

I’ve set my sights on Charlotte’s Thunder Road Marathon on December 12. I chose Thunder Road for a couple of reasons. First, it’s close by – it’s just a 2 hour drive. Second, I’ve run this marathon before, which feels like an advantage somehow. Finally, but not of least importance, is the fact they offer pace groups.

As for my training, the general framework is not much different than the training I did for the Buffalo Marathon. For Buffalo, I used the Level 2 Marathon Plan from Matt Fitzgerald’s book, “Brain Training For Runners”. For that race, my weekly mileage peaked at about 70. This time, I’m using the Level 3 Plan from the same book, and my weekly mileage will peak at about 85-95 miles.

Higher mileage means increased risk of injury. To help offset this risk, I’ve set two process goals. First, I plan to run 20-30% of my weekly mileage on softer surfaces, such as trails. I’m hoping that in addition to offering the softer surface, trail running, with it’s uneven surfaces, will also strengthen the smaller muscles of the lower leg, ankle, and foot. Secondly, I plan to average 8 hours of sleep a night.

I would characterize my training approach as minimalist generally. I want to spend as little time training as necessary to achieve my goal, mainly because I have a husband that I would like to keep. As for my weekly workout schedule, I plan to run 8 times per week (twice a day on Mondays and Thursdays), with Sundays as a complete rest day. Three of my weekly runs will be challenging: intervals one day, tempo-type stuff another day and a long run on Saturday. The remaining five runs will be base runs or recovery runs. Two of the base runs will be followed with resistance training. Mondays base run is always followed by running drills.

I plan to do several races as part of my marathon training to make the hard work fun.