Twin Cities Marathon 2011

I’ve signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon, which runs on October 2nd, 2001. For this race I have two goals: (1) injury free training and (2) minimize training impact on family life. I’ve ran 4 marathons so far and for every one I had to deal with some type of overuse injury. I blame that on improper training methods. My biggest problem is that I push too hard during training, either by running too fast because I want to beat some personal time record or by increasing distances too quickly to catch up from lost time. This year I’m going to watch my speed and work very hard on following the 10% rule – not increasing weekly running distance or long run distance by more than 10% each week.

To setup my training schedule I’ve examined my running over the last two months. I’ve recently ran a half marathon race followed by a couple of 14 mile long runs. The 14 mile long runs were really hard on my legs. I looked over my Garmin GPS training log and during the last couple of months my weekly total miles were pretty weak. I was mostly doing long runs and very few short runs. So I’ve decided to reset my long runs to start at 10 miles so I can focus on building up my weekly total by adding in more short runs. Furthermore, I’m going to add only 1 mile to my long runs each week, which will allow me to increase my short runs more quickly without breaking the 10% rule. My biggest challenge is to get more consistent with my training. I’ve gotten sloppy over the last couple of years.

For me the key to having consistent training is getting out of bed early in the morning. That means waking at about 5:00 or 5:30 AM to get my short runs in before work. This year I plan to do my long runs during the week days to free up my weekends for family. For my long runs I’ll need to rise at about 4:00 AM. Fortunately I have trail nearby my home that I can safely run on before daylight.

I figure I have enough calendar time to get my long runs up to 23 miles and my weekly totals over 60 miles at the pinnacle of my training while staying well within the 10% rule. I also have a couple of spare weeks in my plan just in case something comes up that interferes with training. Furthermore, if I get my long runs up to 20 miles, I’ll still be in good shape for race day, so I have plenty of margin built into my schedule.

It may sound like a lot work, and it is, but I love it.