Sunday, January 11, 2009

Boston Marathon Training Update - Week 2

Yeah, so I’m doing all of us a favor and letting everyone in on the progress of my marathon training on a weekly basis. There’s sixteen weeks in this program so it’s still relatively early, but I’m hoping this will keep me accountable for all the miles from here to Hopkinton. Let the games begin.

Week #2 (1/5-1/11)

What I Planned:

Interval Run: 5 total miles with 2 x 1 mile at 6:09 pace
Recovery Run: 5 miles at recovery pace
General Aerobic Run: 5 miles at 7:10 pace
Weekend Long Run: 12 miles at long run pace
Total week 2 distance: 27 miles

What I Ran:

Interval Treadmill Run: 5.0 miles with 2 interval miles (5:53; 6:05)
Recovery Treadmill Run: 6.13 miles at 7:20 pace
Weekend Long Run: 12.2 miles at 7:02 pace [HR: Avg 171/Max 181]
G.A. Treadmill Run: 5.68 miles at 7:02 pace [HR: Avg 162/Max 176]
Total week 2 distance: 29.0 miles; avg pace – 7:05 min/mi

How I Ran:

I started the week off with speedwork on the treadmill. After adjusting the incline to 1.0 (to account for lack of air resistance) and a quick 0.5 mile warmup, I turned the speed way up (between 9.5-10.0) and ran both my intervals at a blistering pace. I did the first pretty well, but felt somewhat exhausted by the middle of my second. Nonetheless I finished and beat my planned time by a few seconds. I wanted to know my HR since I felt pretty worn out by the time I finished the intervals, almost more so than if I were to run the same intervals outdoors, which was somewhat surprising.

A couple of days later, I checked my ego at the locker room door and did 6 at an easy pace. I then took two days off, expecting to run a 5 mile race this weekend. But because of an impending snowstorm, plans got changed and I pushed through to finish 12 miles - my coldest long run ever to date. Today, I went to the gym and did 5.5 miles on the treadmill. It was nothing spectacular but interestingly enough, my average pace was the same as it was on the long run the day before. On this particular workout, I also remembered to use my heart rate monitor together with my Garmin to record my HR during the entire workout. Does anyone else do this or am I just an eccentric geek?

All-in-all, it was a fast but pretty ordinary, ho-hum week for me in terms of training. Hope you all had a great running weekend!

12 comments:

Andrew is getting fit said...

I record my hr on all my runs. :)

joyRuN said...

I've been trying to keep track of my HR also, but you're an eccentric geek anyway ;)

Anonymous said...

If I was running that fast on a TM I think I would fly off! Great job.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a good week. And, no, I never record my H.R. I just have a plain old school stopwatch to record my times. No Garmin for me.

nwgdc said...

I do that! In fact, I did it yesterday while running laps indoors! Geeks, unite!

Felice Devine said...

Speeee-deeee!
That's awesome.

I hope your knee is OK ;-)

Julianne said...

Regular ho-hum?? :-) Sounds like you did a great job executing your plan for the week!

ECrunnergirl said...

Great runs Lam...I use my HR on my Garmin too..in addition to just loving the gadget...I like to know what my HR is on my tempo runs.

nyflygirl said...

i use the HRM all the time with Mr. Garmin!! :)

audgepodge said...

Snowstorm? Yikes! I also wear my HRM all the time. I've got my Garmin for running and biking and at the gym, I use my more basic Polar watch.

Great to see the road to Boston is off to a great start!

Heather said...

Speed work on the treadmill! That is gnarly. Great job!! Why does the treadmill seem like a harder workout to me?

Marci said...

I've been tracking my training with weekly posts as well, but I like your idea of posting your planned mileage and then what you exactly ran. Good job!

 
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