Random Thoughts On Marathon Training

1. Now that my half-marathon is done, it’s on to marathon training for me. I’ve devised a semi-easy, semi-hard 13-week abbreviated training schedule for myself in preparation for the San Francisco Marathon in August. I don’t know much about this marathon, but I hear it’s hilly, so I’m doing the bulk of training in Central Park, which should be enough to get me prepared for whatever awaits me on the west coast.
2. I’m also trying a new training technique this summer. Instead of keeping my runs to a max of 6-8 miles during the week, I’m combining workouts so that at least once during the week, I’m running 12-14 miles. I’m doing that for two reasons. First, it will allow my to do one fast workout (either intervals or tempo) on my own and then do a recovery/social run with friends/fans at a slower pace. Second, it will serve as an additional medium/long run during the week. Third, because I’m combining workouts, I’ll be able to take more rest days in between workouts too…which will make my legs very happy.
3. I’ve looked over the race schedules for the months of June/July in the entire tri-state area three times over and there’s not one half marathon during that time frame that I can enter. I usually like to do one about three or four weeks beforehand as a pace run just to gauge where my training is at and what time I should realistic shoot for. So now that I’ve being denied that opportunity, I’ll have to come up with a virtual 13.1 mile race on my own. (Yeah, you can pass this info on to a certain virtual race director so she can get the ball rolling on this one right away!)
4. In my experience, the epic battle between speed and distance in marathon training is almost always dominated by the faster miles, especially during the summer months. I have tried to rectify that situation by incorporating 1-18 miler and 4-20 miler runs into the schedule. That is double the number of long runs I did each of the last two years in preparation for the marathon. One thing I will try to do is to turn one of the 20s into a 22 and run it at a pace that is just slightly slower than what I plan to run in the actual thing. I’m hoping it’ll help me feel more comfortable running with fatigue during the later miles.
5. For once in my life, I will also try to eat more as I train more. One of the problems I'd had in the past has been that I tend to lose too much weight during peak training season. This year, I will buy more fruits and yogurt to have after dinner as a snack before I go to bed. Believe it or not, this last proclamation will be music to my mom’s ears more than mine. Go figure!

That’s all the ideas I have for improving my time. I’m hoping to break 3:05 in SF (there, I said it…my new time goal!) so I’m implementing these modifications to my existing training plan to make the runs funner, faster, healthier, and more productive. Whether they work or not remains to be seen. What do you all think? Any and all additional suggestions are welcome; just leave your name, age, and previous marathon finish next to your comments so I know how legit your advice is. Haha, j/k…you can leave out that last part.