TIaRT: Boston and Marathon Madness

It's Thursday, which means it is time for Take It and Run Thursday! This week's theme is Boston and Marathon Madness:

Boston feels like the unofficial kickoff to this year's marathon season. In celebration of the start, we thought it would be helpful to collect training plans that you have used for marathon training and create a clearinghouse for training plans. Take a minute to jot down your plans or talk about your plans and then link them to the article so others can use and review them as they create their own.

I've trained for and completed two marathons: Marine Corps 2006 and Chicago 2007. For both marathons, I used Hal Higdon's Novice I training plan. I essentially ran four days per week, with a long run building up to one 20 mile run to top of a 40 mile week. He always had cross training for one day, but I admittedly never really cross trained. For Marine Corps, I was in marching band season, so I usually counted that as cross training. For Chicago, I was serving four to five days per week, so I counted that as cross training. Was it really cross training? Probably not, but when you're on your feet so much, it was nice to have an extra day off.

Hal recommends this program for people who are doing their first marathon and are looking to finish injury-free. For my first marathon, I didn't really know any better, so it sounded good to me. The plan came through and I finished without any pains, although the last five miles were pretty tough. When I was getting ready for my second marathon, I thought about upgrading to Hal's intermediate plan, but I hadn't been running as much prior to when training was supposed to start. (I graduated from college and then went on a three week tour of Europe...not exactly when I wanted to be focusing on marathon training!) Since my base was next to nothing, I stuck with the novice program one more time. Due to the toasty circumstances that were Chicago 2007, I'm not sure it really mattered which plan you followed!

In getting ready to do my third marathon (next weekend!), I decided that I wanted to do a plan with more mileage and definitely more than one twenty mile run. I've been usually Hal Higdon's Intermediate II training plan, which builds up to three 20 mile runs in 50 mile weeks. Since I switched my marathon last minute, I've only done two 20 milers, but I really think that Hal's weekend mileage will serve me well at my next marathon. Running ten miles the day before a twenty mile run definitely teaches your legs what it is like to run tired, and it also gives me the confidence to know that I can successfully run the distance come race day. I guess we'll know better how it works out in nine days!

For my next marathon (always planning ahead!), I think I'm going to try Pete Pfitzinger's programs. Many runners use Pfitz with a lot of success, and I think that adding speed work (tempo runs, intervals) into my marathon training will definitely give me a boost. Hal has advanced programs that include speedwork, but they include six days of running per week, and that is a bit too much for me!

I think that the best training plan is the one that works for YOU. You can run any number of miles per week, with or without speed work, run doubles, or cross train three days a week, but if it doesn't fit into your life, you aren't going to be happy and successful with your plan. Could we all run faster if we ran 100 mile weeks? Maybe, but I don't think I'm ever going to find out!

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Four miles today! We're nine days out from marathon day, so taper taper taper it is!

Thursday, April 23
4.12 miles in 32:07, avg pace of 7:48

It was a fantastic 65 degrees today, which would be a little too warm for me come race day. Weather.com is currently predicting rain for race day, but I'm hoping that will change before we get there!