I've now run five full marathons, one in 2007, two in both 2008 and 2009. While that has been pretty good for me, as far as scheduling/timing/training all go, I think I'm ready to try three. Or at least two and a really strong half marathon.
Ah, but there I go, jumping ahead of myself. If we don't learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it, right?
Both of my races this year were alright performances. At Boston, I struggled with some GI issues but muddled on through for a race just 68 seconds slower than my time at Memphis a few months prior. On a much tougher course, I considered the day a draw.
Marshall, though, I definitely under-performed. I am chalking it up to the serious lack of proper face-stuffing the morning of the race in particular. If the car has no gas, it won't go. I was lucky to not fall apart more than I did, and I will credit hard training and general bull-headedness for that.
You can see the weekly mileage from those two races in these graphs, and here's a nice table for comparison, too.
| MPW | Boston | Marshall | Pfitz Plan |
| Avg | 49 | 67 | 75 |
| High | 72 | 90 | 87 |
| Low | 24 | 48 | 54 |
| Result | 3:16:16 | 3:11:54 | ?!?!? |
I feel like my training for Marshall didn't follow the plan closely enough for me to reap all the benefits of the Pfitz mesocycles. And I think the high mileage weeks were a little too sporadic. There should have been a more consistent build-up process and better recovery weeks. Granted I had the Bourbon Chase not long before my taper, which kind of threw things off, too.
For my next marathon, I am going to try following the schedule more consistently and make myself do all the workouts. No skipping tempo, or MP runs, or strides, or anything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment