A man with a plan

It's not that I've been sitting on my behind all day doing nothing but there just hasn't been a lot of news to share lately. Our Father's Day race last weekend went really well with about 70 runners in the 5 miler and a dozen or so kids in the shorter races for them. That's a picture of my running friend Sylvio Bourque who is also race director of the highly successful Grand-Digue 15k in south eastern New Brunswick. He did well at our race clocking 35:49 for the 5 miles coming 2nd in his age group. In breaking news, Sylvio just won 2 national titles at the Canadian arm wrestling championships in Summerside, a good guy to have on your side!
Meanwhile, my walk-running has progressed to mostly run-walking with the latest run of 4.3 miles with only a stretch break after 1 mile (as for all runs) and a 1 minute walk break at the 3 mile mark. You can see the details of my runs in the sidebar of the blog under 'My latest workouts' if you're so inclined... Over the past 2 weeks, the progression has been from mostly walking (with 1 minute running each mile) to now mostly running with 1 minute walk breaks at every mile or so. My running heartrate is still much higher than I'd like for the paces and for some reason my easy pace is dialed in around 8:00-8:30 or so. I'm not able to run any slower and will just have to work on that. Maybe Super Andrew will have some hints the next time we meet.

Speaking of which, I've penciled in at least 7 Boyden long runs with Andrew in my latest attempt at a marathon plan as shown here. Do you like all the pretty colors? I think 'quiet' Grellan appreciates it. The yellow days are my rest days and I'm trying to give myself at least 2 per week in order not to do "too much too soon". The green shows my scheduled holiday travel trips where getting a workout in might be more difficult than usual and flexibility may be required. The trip to Sweden in August for my son's wedding will be the big one and the whole family is anxiously awaiting that adventure.

The red letter days are planned races and most of them are 'coach' approved but I might try to slip in another one if things fall into place. I wonder if there are some races in Sweden?? The trickiest one will be the Saint John marathon on Sept 27 which was scheduled as a 22 mile run in the Pfitzinger plan. I'm hoping that I can run it as an easy long training run with some marathon paced bits and then just jog it in at the end but my record at doing that is not very good. I've also got the Canada Day 5k race in just 2 days in Saint John and the plan here is to just do the distance and leave the competitive juices for another day. Again, that remains to be seen. I think this plan is quite do-able, the mileage build is gradual, lots of rest days, slow build of tempo stuff over the weeks and long runs which are frequent and long enough. The overall weekly mileage is low (max 51) but again I have to go carefully with this and see that rest and recovery comes 1st. I'm not looking at setting any PR's this year and just want to get back at it and enjoy the process.

Speaking of enjoyment, we're off to Ontario to visit our 2 sons and most of Jo's relatives. Besides the usual scheduled running on Ottawa trails and Orangeville country back roads we've booked a B&B in Vermont which sits right on the Green Mountain marathon course. The plan will be to run and document the course using my usual camera and video tricks for all to see and enjoy. The nice feature of this marathon is that it's an out and back and so I only have to run 13.1 miles to get it all in. It should be a fun run!

Well that's all I got for now. I'm feeling almost 100% (which can be dangerous) and looking forward to the next two months of travel, holidays and some running too! Take care and have a great week!