Running for Your Life: Just Try to Slow Down

It’s Week 8 of my 15-week training program that will end in my entry in the 2013 edition of the Steamtown Marathon in Scranton, Pa.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from my teaching days (and with living with M) is that you don’t keep going back to anything unless you’re learning something new.

So it goes with marathon training. The Sunday, October 13 running of Steamtown will mark my seventh entry in this bruiser of an event, a 26.2-mile foot race. In the previous six, I’ve finished four of them. (In 2011, I was forced to pull out of the Boston Marathon due to injury … I’m not counting that one because I didn’t make it to the starting line.)

What I’ve learned – especially as an older than average marathoner – is that my body will not do what it used to in my 20s, 30s, and 40s. (Despite my best efforts to counteract those aging effects through attention to diet, anti-inflammatory meds and foods, stretching and strengthening.)

More than anything, as I crest the hump of my 100-day training program (Aug. 6 is Day 51), I am facing my Achilles Heel – So, ease up, already, OC!

Instead though I continue to run – even during my long, over 15 milers – at my marathon pace, or about eight minutes per mile. Or train on the treadmill at fast speeds, rather than slow ones.

The manual I’m using, Joe Henderson’s, Marathon Training, The Proven 100-Day Program for Success http://amzn.to/15DmV56, is very helpful at instructing me to alternate long runs with shorter runs (as well as take plenty of rest days and cross train).

But how to throw the body into that lower gear. Currently it is taking me a day or more to recover, with stiff muscles and soreness, tender hammies. I’ve been bound and determined to get close to a New York City Marathon qualifying time of 3:14, a 19-minute lop from my first Steamtown in 2010. It’s doable. But this week is a critical one. On Thursday, as per Henderson’s manual, I plan to run a 10K race simulation. But otherwise I’m going short and slow, with days of rest. At the end of the Week 8, or Day 56, I’ll have only put in about 20 miles. With the view that during Week 9, I’ll have paced myself enough to resume harder training.

Next: Running for Your Life: California Mood