• Ill-advised isn’t stopping me •
[2 MIN READ]
Kind of like for my unparalleled 3-race spring this year, fall has had a little of its own nuttiness in the form of a couple of not-originally-planned races (including the Rocky Run 10MI on 11’09’S). Spring was a function of my social-running mentality that made me say “Sure” to all 3 races when someone said each time, “Anyone want to run with me?” Fall was entirely of my own doing; this time because no one even asked me.
For the 3 spring races, I trained fine and tapered fine. I even managed to win my first-ever AG 1st in my first-ever trail race. For fall, I trained less fine and am still working on the taper. The catalyst was a boatload of new Wednesday night JRC runners who had joined the crew in order to train for their first-ever marathons. It seems that’s catalytic enough for me to do (modest) marathon training and make a plan to pace one rudder bunny for their Philly effort. Even more of the nuttiness has been my long-run distances.
A bunch of years ago during a previous marathon-training cycle, I learned that a runner’s long run should not exceed 40% of their weekly mileage. Based on that a 20-mile run would be part of a 50-mile week. One article even says 20-30%, which means weekly mileage would have to be 67-100. Well, I never.
As the years have passed, I’ve gotten lazy even about reaching that 40-mile weekly goal while still working up to 22-mile long runs. Two weeks ago I did one in a 27-mile week. That made my long-run mileage 81% of my weekly total. If it sounds like a terrible idea to train like that, I agree. The risk of injury is high.
I credit (blame?) SRC’s Shawmont Avenue run for making me such a risk taker. Maintaining that traditional 14-mile run ‘pretty much every week’ means my conditioning is in a very different place than when I was a new marathon runner, even if my weekly distance is now struggling to reach 30 miles. (There was one 44-mile week recently.) The question is if that’s enough for a 4:20 marathon (with me hovering around 4:00 in spring), the target time for rudder bunny. I’ll let you know how this nuttiness pans out after the race.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe) “Negative Split or Positive Splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text by Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-published: Facebook Shawmont Running Club (ZY Weekly Newsletter 11/16/24), Shawmont Running Club website, Ruminations by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Rumination only with added caption.
Postscript: Pacing with Some Greats
Updated: 2024’12’03’T (Addition of Postscript)
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