Monday, August 3, 2015

Head Up, Wings Out!

I'm ready to fly! Today marks the first day of my 18-week training plan for the California International Marathon. I just wrapped up 10 weeks of base building and I feel ready to tackle the rigors of training for a full marathon. 

My training plan comes from Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger and is divided into 4 mini-cycles within the whole 18 week cycle. The first 6 weeks will focus on endurance training, with the 6th week marked as a recovery week. During this cycle, I am focusing on building endurance specific to the marathon.

The plan uses 8 different categories of workouts:

  • Long Runs (any run 16+ miles at 10-20% slower than my goal marathon pace)
  • Medium-Long Runs (any run 11 to 15 miles, similar pace to long runs)
  • Marathon Pace Runs (medium-long or long runs in which most of the miles are run at goal marathon pace--8:35/mile for me)
  • General Aerobic Runs (standard moderate-effort runs up to 10 miles "regular runs)
  • Lactate Threshold Runs (tempo runs with at least 20 minutes at lactate threshold pace--7:53-8:08/mile for me)
  • Recovery Runs (short runs done at a relaxed pace with goal to keep heart rate reserve below 70%--for me 143 bpm)
  • VO2 max Intervals (600m to 1,600m run at current 5k pace--7:20/mile for me)
  • Speed Training (repetitions of 50 to 150 meters at sprint pace done towards the end of a general aerobic run)

Week 1 (17 weeks until marathon)


Goal mileage: 33 miles

Monday: Rest or cross-training (Cycle class)
Tuesday: 8 miles with 4 miles at tempo (Lactate Threshold run)
Wednesday: Rest or cross-training (travel to Sacramento + Cycle class)
Thursday: 9 miles, general aerobic run with Nani #dogmiles
Friday: Rest or cross-training (1 mile warm-up jog + Tabata)
Saturday: 12 miles, medium-long run
Sunday: 4 miles recovery run + yoga

Total (actual) Mileage: 34.3 miles

The total 18-week schedule is challenging and the weeks will get progressively harder, so it is great that this first week has 3 rest days and the total run volume is less than I've been running. 

I'm off to a great start because I rocked Marathon Training, Day 1! ;)

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