Thanksgiving is here and gone. Is there any month that goes faster, than U.S. Thanksgiving to Christmas? Well, perhaps, not so much in my case because now the sidewalks and the intersections and the plazas in the vicinity of my near-Times Square office building are shoulder to shoulder with people, the majority of whom are out-of-towners, not in any kind of hurray to go anywhere, so each day from the first workday after Thanksgiving the odds of me getting to work precisely on time rise because now between subway exit to office desk lies a route with late-minute factor of three or four or five depending on the sedimentary – no, not sedentary, I’m thinking more like a river that fills with sediment so that it no longer flows – quality from subway to office chair. Keep pouring in the sediment and the river can slow to a stop.
And now I’m finally (I can almost hear the visible sigh of relief out there) on a training track for Boston. Call it the longest drum roll in blog-keeping history, that is if you consider my endpoint the April 2012 Boston Marathon the subject matter, what else is there to turn to in this blog, twice weekly since Summer 2010? In that time, I’ve run only one marathon, the Steamtown Marathon, Scranton, Penn., in which I qualified for Boston, but then overtrained myself into injury oblivion in March 2011, so I had to postpone Boston for another year, as thankfully my Steamtown QT is still sufficient to get me into Boston 2012.
It’s 133 training days until the BM. My goal? To run a sub-3:30 Boston. Given that I managed a 3:33:08 personal record in Scranton running on very sore feet, I’m thinking that it’s a gettable goal, which also happens to be the last-year qualifying time for the New York City Marathon. If not in 2012, then in 2013.
Because what the past few months have taught me is that I’m not just a runner but a serious runner. And it’s time to put that level of seriousness to a test. As in, make the right plans. Here’s what I’m talking about:
Larry’s 133-day Boston Marathon training calendar: (Day One is Monday, Nov. 28, the first workday after Thanksgiving) ---
Well, I won’t bore you with ALL the particulars, except to say that during the next 133 days I’ll be keeping a separate journal, a little red notebook, to be specific, within which I will make notations, to wit:
Week One Day One Nov. 28
-- 4 miles (with cantakerous Thurb!) in Prospect Park
-- No interval training, ie sprints up/down Lake Lookout staircase, but better than moderate pace
-- Pain: Minimal left forefoot, mild shin splint, right leg
Week One Day Two Nov. 29
-- 2 miles (16 minutes on treadmill). Half with substantial incline; on 0.0 incline, hit my sprint pace, 7-minute mile, in five-minute interval. Medical hose on right leg to guard against shin splint.
-- No appreciable pain
And so on. Blame it on The Runner’s Body http://bit.ly/tpIv3x. It’s science for a runner of my age (which as I’ve said here so often that I have to tip my running cap [Brooklyn Public Library, with Velco pocket for house key and debit card] to you, dear reader, for your forebearance, that if I’m determined to run for my life I have to treat my body, and mind, better) that is so smart and common sensical that it now governs my training. And if you’re looking to get in shape like me, to take yourself to a new level of fitness, or use it as inspiration, to start to develop a good health program, come along.
At the end, in my case, I can’t but wish that I’ll be crossing the finish line at Boston with a smile on my face, and a sub-3:30 in my record. But we’ll see. It’s going to be fun to find out.
133 days divided by seven is the equivalent of 19 weeks. Some books will tell you that from a strong fitness place you can meet your training goals with time and energy to spare with a 100-day program. The Runner’s Body asks that we listen to our bodies, and not find ourselves – as I did last March – being forced to push ourselves too hard, because we need to “get the miles in", when we are weakened with infection, or have the beginnings of a muscle tear or surprise soreness or debilitating DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), that broken-body feeling you have not the day after a longer run than usual, or even a short run after an extended absence, but a couple or three days later.
I’m also wary of ramping up my running too fast to 50 or 60 or 70 miles per week, as I have in the past. My tendency to rush this part of my training has been my single biggest (and most common, according to the exercise scientists) mistake. In this way, under a nineteen-week training regimen, I can slowly increase those miles. The Runner’s Body says that in serious training you should only increase your weekly load in miles and intensity by 10 percent per week, so that during Week One, if I put in a modest 30 miles, which seems about right to me, that by Week Ten, say, I will be running about 70 miles a week, and hopefully with the strength and looseness and speed that will keep me at that level for the next five weeks, at which point the tapering will begin through until race day.
Well, that's the plan. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.
Running for Your Life: Your Immune System
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