First Long Run

Marathon Training Schedule

I've been reading Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfitzinger and Scott Douglas. I'm basing my training this year on that book. It was recommended to me by my friend and super fast kid Eric Charette. All the reviews I've read have been rave. The principles all make sense to me. I hope to train both smarter and harder this year.

The schedules in the book don't exactly fit my real life, but they do a great job of explaining the principles of marathon training such that I am able to modify the schedules. I've been blending the principles in that book with the principles in Daniels' Running Formula by Jack Daniels. I'm leaning much more heavily on Advanced Marathoning, though. I highly recommend both books to anyone who wants to train smarter.

Based on those books, I have my training schedule made through October, including the races that I'm already committed to. I'll post more about the races I have planned later. Of course, I'll do recaps after each one.

Today's Run

Back to today's run. The schedule calls for a 17 miler today. AM generally recommends running long runs 10% to 20% slower than marathon pace. Start 20% slower and build to 10% slower, finishing the last several miles at the fast end of that range. It was not easy to do that today, but I was able to hold on at the end. I ran the last mile a little faster than called for.

Matt joined me for today's run around Athens and he held on great. It was hot and humid, but not quite as humid as it has been. 72F and 87% RH to start and 78F and 75% RH at the end. That's considerably warmer and more humid than comfortable.

1. 8:55
2. 8:22
3. 8:28
4. 8:22
5. 8:20
6. 8:16
7. 8:28
8. 8:08
9. 8:13
10. 8:14
11. 8:12
12. 7:54
13. 8:07
14. 8:00
15. 7:58
16. 8:13 (traffic stops)
17. 7:39