Starting Fresh

I've been a bit depressed about my Illinois half-marathon finish time. Sure, 1:41 is not super slow. But it ain't what I wanted. I suppose "depressed" is too harsh of a word. Maybe disappointed. Or dismayed. Discouraged? Anyway, it has not been positive. After recovering, I caught a cold. That made me think more deeply about my running and training. I want to be healthy and fit. That doesn't always mean fast. I want to run consistently, avoid injuries, and keep things low stress. So...that is what I'm going to do! Starting at the end of last week, I decided to employ a Jeff Galloway run-walk strategy in my runs. I hope to continue this all summer and see how my training goes. There will be a few races too, and those will be good benchmarks to see if my training is progressing. My main goal events for summer are ultra distances: Dogs & Cats 5-Hour, Last Man Standing, Howl at the Moon 8-hour. Fall will be Tunnel Hill 50 miler. Sounds like a good time to practice what I'll be doing in ultra races...walking. And slower overall paces.

My plan comes from Galloway's web site and his "Boston Marathon: How to Qualify" book. I check out his newsletter too. Nothing crazy new from him, but it's a nice return to the classics for me. For now, I'm implementing a 3 minute run, 1 minute walk technique. General overall pace for runs will be about 10:00. I like his idea of a "magic mile" test run every few weeks. Warm-up, run one mile fast, then cool down. The pace of the one mile helps define your marathon race pace and long run pace. Marathon pace is 1.3 x mile pace. Long run pace is 2 minutes slower than marathon race pace! That is slow. Ideal for building an aerobic base with no injuries. I'll take it.