Week 45 Wrapup

I went back to a more normal running schedule this week. I switched to the new shoes, and they feel fine except it seems like there's a little too much room in the toe. I don't know if a half size smaller would have been better, or if that would have been more prone to blisters, or what. As it stands, the toe on one of the shoes has developed a crease in it from getting folded while I run, and the crease itself rubs on my big toe. If I get another pair of these, I think I'll get them in an 11.5 instead of 12 just to see what happens. I don't know if Mizuno makes these shoes on a bigger last than my previous pair, or if I've lost too much weight in my foot, or what the difference might be. The guy at the shoe store never asked my size or anything, and I never thought to really examine the toe, so it's all a surprise to me.

I'm having a hard time deciding what to do next. I'd like to keep running, but I need specific goals for motivation. I don't know if I want to set my next goal to be another marathon or something else. One thing I know for sure is that I'd like to get faster. The worst part of the marathon training (aside from the overpowering heat and the agonizing pain) was how long those training runs were. If I could speed up, I could get those things done and over with faster.

On my marathon training long runs, I started at a pace of around 10:57/mi, then bumped it up every four weeks until I was doing 10:30/mi. If I could improve that a little bit, to a 9:00/mi pace, that would save a full half hour on a 20 mile run. So, I definitely don't want to do a full marathon training program until I can at least do my long runs at a 9:00/mi pace. To test that, I pushed myself a little bit harder on the 12 miles I did yesterday, and finished it at a 9:56/mi pace. I feel like I could have pushed a little harder still, but probably couldn't sustain 9:00/mi for that long yet. It feels close, though.

I'd like to try at least a couple of 5Ks or 10Ks in the next few months as well, as a way of testing my improved speed. The last 5K I did gave me a time of 28:33, but based on the paces I was doing for the speedwork and tempo runs in my marathon training, I'm fairly confident I could do 5K in somewhere between 25 and 26 minutes right now.

As a long term goal, I'd like to get down to a 20 minute 5K time. Looking at the results for some local 5Ks, that would be a good enough time to win my division and place in the top 5 outright in some of the smaller races. Of course, in some of the bigger races, it wouldn't even be in the top 10 in my division, but at least it's a time that's competitive under the right circumstances. I don't have any idea how long it would take or what kind of work would be involved in getting to this point. I don't know if that's something that's possible in 6 months, or if it would take 6 years for me to get there.

I think what I'm going to do is this: Set a short term goal of a 22:30 5K time, and work for as long as it takes to get there. Then, depending on how hard that was or how long that took, reevaluate where to go from there.

For the specifics of my training, I'm going to do a few things. For starters, I'll switch to a 4 day a week schedule. The 3 days made more sense for the marathon training, since so much time was tied up in the long runs. 3 days is a lot easier to manage schedule wise, too. But, if I want to be serious about this, the extra day will probably be required.

I did like the fact that there was a specific focus to each of the days on the 3 day plan, and I'd like to carry that over to my new plan and give each day a specific workout and goal. One day will be pure speedwork (intervals). One day will be a tempo run. One day will be hills. And then Saturday will still be long runs (8-16 miles). I might not need runs that long for short distance races, but they'll really help with endurance. The main reason I'll keep doing them, though, is that I'd like to keep myself in good long run shape so that I could jump in to anything if needed. If I decided that I wanted to run a marathon in a month, that would still be totally possible. I might not have the best time, but if I'm still doing long enough runs, I'll at least be likely to finish without walking. Also, I want to keep doing the long runs, because I need to be working toward that 9:00/mi goal for the long runs. I'll attempt to thrown in a spin class occasionally (or at least whenever I feel like waking up at 4:45), also.

The other thing I like about the marathon training plan was that it had steady increases in mileage for 3 weeks, then took a break with some short easy runs for a week. Then it would come back at a harder pace with even more mileage for another 3 weeks, then break for another week, and so on. I'll probably try something similar. I'll run at a certain pace for a few weeks, then take it easy for a week (or taper for a race). Then, crank up each pace a notch and do it again. I'll probably just pull some starting paces out of my butt, then adjust a little if they feel wrong, then after each rest week, step up the interval paces by 5 seconds, the tempo pace by 10, the long run by 15, or something like that. I know that if I want to hit 22:30 for a 5K time, I have to sustain a 7:15 pace. That breaks down to about 3:37 for 800m, 1:48 for 400m, and 0:54 for 200m, so at some point, my intervals will probably have to be faster than that.

Next week, I'm going to Vegas for a couple of days and taking care of the kids by myself the rest of the time, so I won't get a lot of running in. But, I'm going to go to the track and time myself for a couple of distances and see where I'm at now so that I can start my new schedule at a good pace the following week.