I'm back to my blogging! Hopefully I'll actually stick to it this time. The last marathon I ran was a virtual/solo marathon for Indy Monumental here in Warrick County back in 2020, I really enjoyed the solo miles and watching the sun rise and running in silence. BUT after a couple of years of focusing in the gym on weight lifting and getting stronger, and just basically enjoying a little time off from the time demands that go along with marathon training, I am ready to jump back in.
I've set my sights on the Greater St. Louis Marathon next April, but my goal is not to just finish it - I'm setting my goal to a sub 4 hour finish time. That would mean I would need a steady pace of 9:09 min/mile, but I intend to train focused on running a 8:46 min/mile.
Even more shocking.... this is my first time to actually use a real training plan, I've been running and lifting for nearly 14 years, but I know that in order to accomplish this feat, I will need to actually use a training plan that is for a sub 4 hour finish.
My twenty week training plan doesn't officially begin until December 11, so I've got 5 weeks to build my long run back up to 10 miles and my mileage back up to 4 days a week with the long run on the 5th day. My training plan also includes 3 runs at the 8:46 min/mile pace, intervals on the treadmill, along with the easy runs and the long run to be ran at a slow pace... still not sure about that one but I'll probably end up running my long runs at my easy pace...maybe slightly slower than easy.
I've also been decreasing my time spent in the gym lifting, over the last few months I've been going 5 days a week and normally spend 2 hours lifting. So I've been cutting back as closely to 1.5 hours as possible while also cutting the sets back from 5 to 4 sets each. And leg day won't be as intense, but focused on maintenance while I build my mileage.
My diet has been awful though, I'm not pleased with that but I'll admit it. Not sure if I'll really talk about my eating though, maybe I should but I'll start next week. My blogs will be weekly. Doing them each day would take too much time and be too tedious.
Monday was my first treadmill run focused on marathon pace, or at least building to it. I figure I'll focus on an 8:57 min/mile pace during the first two weeks, holding it steady for 4-5 miles before bumping it down to 8:46 min/mile which will be the marathon goal pace.
1 mile warm up at 9:10 min/mile
4 miles at 8:57 min/mile pace
Then I lifted for an hour and 50 minutes, I know that the days I focus on legs and back will be quite a bit longer than delts & chest or even just back.
1 mile warm up at 9:14 min/mile
4 miles at 8:55 min/mile
Legs and Back focus in the gym, though I'm now maintaining current intensity and effort for legs, while also cutting down the sets.
Thursday I didn't run but took it as a rest day from that, focusing on delts & chest and some abs in the gym. One hour and 45 minutes
Saturday.... Dorian woke us at 2:09 am going downstairs to the bathroom, by the time I got down there I could hear him puking. After cleaning up and cleaning him up, we went back upstairs and he got in his bed with his phone. I got back into our bed and tried to get some sleep, around 4:00 am Dorian came into our room ready to go back to sleep so he got in bed with us and I stayed there with him for a bit before it was obvious he was back to sleep.
I told myself to just be happy with 6-8 miles, I honestly didn't feel like getting out and running. It was an out and back route so when I reached mile 4:6, I decided to just keep going to mile 5. Ended up with 10.02 miles with an average pace of 9:45 min/mile so I succeeded at keeping it steady and slow.
In total, I ran 27.2 miles for this first week. And I worked out for 8 hours and 45 minutes. Not bad at all.
