Saturday, November 25, 2006

Weekly musing

Still running and hardly training but certainly thinking about it. Andrew has lit a fire under me and may still convince me to make the plunge with Lydiard. I've been sitting on the fence for awhile taking it easy with the Pfitzinger plan which works but has not shown any huge improvements to my marathon times.

So, finished off the week with a lazy 8 miles on Friday and another easy 7 today for a weekly total of 55. The plan is to do 20 in the morning with Andrew and finally decide what kind of commitment I'm willing make for the spring marathon. I'm sure we'll have a long conversation on the details and know which direction he'll be leaning.

I noted in a previous post that it wasn't always the best of plans to be doing long runs of 20+ miles week after week. Most training plans give you a break so you're only doing them every other week. I thought that I'd check the old training logs and lo and behold it has happened in my distant past but even more so recently.

Thus far this year there have been 15 runs of 20+ miles and 4 times there have been back to back weeks. Tomorrow will be new territory with my 1st triple or 3x20 in a row. That Mainiac from Eastport is certainly having an influence on my running and I must admit it has been for the better despite my occasional whining.

"Why dost thou run so many mile about?"
- Shakespeare, Richard III

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I envy both you and Andrew for being able to follow either of those plans. I still hope to adhere to one of them in the future. Have a good 20 tomorrow.

DawnB said...

Mike it sounds like a challenge you are up to. Go for it. This may just what you need, a change!!!

Mike said...

While I think Pfitzinger has a good thing going, there is the question of whether or not following the same schedule several times will lead to further improvements. I think you're doing the right thing by keeping a detailed log to go back over what worked and what didn't work, and I know Andrew puts a lot of thought and research into his own plans. I think the two of you could put together some sort of hybrid plan that could bring more benefit to your specific physiology. As much as I like 20+ milers I've actually done fewer this time around. I think it's good to experiment as long as you have a reason for it.

MB said...

Your running is starting to read like that of an UltraRunners. If I was doing this kind of training then a few 50K's or 50M's would be in the works.

I like your countdown timer to Boston.