6 Miles at 10:11 Pace

For this morning's Easy Run, I decided to follow through on my planned change in strategy and decided to slow things down a bit. For the past couple of weeks, I've been running my easy runs at about a 9:30 pace. So, this morning, I put on the brakes and brought my pace down to 10:11 and I have to admit I felt much better after my run and throughout the day. Maybe it didn't hurt that I also had a little more than 7.25 hours of sleep last night (compared to my usual 6 hours per night)!

Anyway, I'm going to keep true to following a slower pace for the next 2 weeks as I lead up to the Philadelphia Rock 'n' Roll Half-Marathon which is Sunday, September 18. Once I have that behind me, I'll add speed workouts once a week to my training program in prep for the Philadelphia Marathon on November 21!

Happy and Safe Running!
John

Training Paces

I've been reading a lot lately to help me set a realistic finish time goal for my first full marathon. My biggest fear is overtraining at the expense of risking an injury that will sidetrack me from being successful. Today I came across this really useful tool, Runners World Training Calculator which advertises itself to be One Tool for All Your Training Needs. What a fantastic resource! Not only did it summarize for me the target paces for my different type of runs (Easy, Tempo, Max, Speed, and Long), it also highlighted for me that I have, in fact, been overtraining.

Based on my half-marathon performances thus far (2:03:15, 1:59:23, and 1:59:48), I can comfortably say that my target time for the Philadelphia Marathon should be between 4:10 and 4:30. With that said, my recent training paces have been more aligned with a 3:50 finish time which is not realistic at all. And, I do think I am beginning to feel the consequences (right Achilles, left knee).

So, this week (Week 5), I will implement a new strategy going forward with my training program. Tomorrow is an Easy Run day and I will be slowing things down a bit and will look forward to new results!

Training Run	4hr 30min	4hr 15min	4hr 10min
Easy Run	11:28	10:52	10:40
Tempo	9:36	9:05	8:55
Max	8:41	8:12	8:03
Speed	8:03	7:36	7:27
Long	11:28	10:52	10:40
	12:53	12:13	12:00

Week 5: Marathon Training

Training For:
Philadelphia Marathon
Sunday, November 21, 2011

Week 5:
August 29 – September 4, 2011

Day	Date	Session
Mon	Aug 29	45 min, Zone 1 – 2
Tues	Aug 30	60 min, Zone 2
Wed	Aug 31	REST
Thu	Sep 01	60 min, Zone 2
Fri	Sep 02	45 min, Zone 1 – 2
Sat	Sep 03	120 min, Zone 1 – 2
Sun	Sep 04	REST
Total		5.50 hr Run

Mon and Fri:
Optional Cross-Train Days

This is Sunday so that means a new week of training starts tomorrow morning. Week 4 comes to a close and will be remembered for 2 interesting events that were contributed by Mother Nature! On Tuesday, the Philadelphia area was rocked by an earthquake whose epicenter was in Virginia and yesterday, Hurricane Irene pounded us with high winds and heavy rains. We are still experiencing wind gusts but the rain is finished. The weather forecast for the coming week looks absolutely splendid – temps in the low to mid 80's each day with lots of sunshine. Week 5 will be a great week for my early morning runs!

Today is a REST day for me and I am having a bit of a sluggish day. I did not sleep well last night as I was keeping my eyes and ears open for the weather reports due to the storm that was in full force. I hope to get a good night's rest tonight so I can get back to logging my miles tomorrow morning.

Happy Running Folks!
John