Week 25 Wrapup

It's much easier for me to keep running when I have some sort of a schedule to stick to towards a specific goal. I'd like to try the 10k again, but the racing season is pretty much shut down for the summer here. I don't really know what I want to do yet long term with my running, but I know I'd like to run longer or faster. Without a specific idea in mind other than that, I decided to start marathon training.

I decided this for a few reasons, none of which have anything to do with running a marathon. I am not planning on running a marathon. However, I am curious to see how far I could actually make it towards training for one without killing myself. I'm also curious how someone could go about training for a marathon during the Arizona summer without, you know, dying.

I dug around online and settled on a training schedule that's only three days a week. Each day has a particular focus. Monday is a shorter run at an easy pace. Wednesday is a longer tempo run or speedwork, and Saturday is a long run. I picked this schedule for a few reasons: For one, it's hard to find the time to run, and longer runs will mean more time I have to find. Finding time three days a week is easier than 4 or 5. Also, before I hurt my leg, I was only running about 15-18 miles a week. To start marathon training and throw in some long runs would mean that I either increase my mileage by way more than the 10% safe threshold that's usually recommended, or else run really short runs on the non-long run days.

I figure if I make it more than a couple of weeks without hurting myself I could add another easy run on Thursday or something if I feel like I'm not doing enough. If I manage to make it through 10 or 12 weeks of this, at that point I can consider whether or not I would want to find a marathon to run. But again, just to make it clear, I have no plans to run a marathon at this point.

I was in Mexico this week, and did my Wednesday tempo run right in the middle of the day with Carson. I thought this would be no problem at all because it felt pretty cool outside. I failed to realize that the reason it felt so cool was that there was a 6 mph wind blowing east while we were running west. Once we turned around and started running back, we were running with the wind, so it was just hot still air all around us. Also, I was supposed to do 1 mile warmup, then 3 miles at 9:33, then 1 mile cooldown. The 9:33 is a little faster than my normal pace, and that was overheating me as well. So, after 2 1/2 miles of the fast part, I was feeling a little light headed and had to stop or risk some sort of heatstroke.

Saturday's run was a lot easier. It was eight miles down to the guard shack and back, and went just fine.