The Plan
Prior to the first one, I thought that I set a reasonable expectation for completing a marathon: running it in its entirety. I have done plenty of half marathons, running them without resorting to any walking, albeit a little sore afterward.
After an unexpectedly walking the last ten miles, I completed my first marathon in approximately six hours. This is disappointing because I had an impression that I could knock one out in four to four and a half hours. Since then, I’ve partially ran two additional marathons with the same disappointing outcome. I finish them, but there is quite a bit of walking involved. By 9:30 a.m. the Florida sun beats down on you. The weather is always a toss-up, as it usual turns out to be a warm and humid day. Rarely is it cold. Within an hour of the sun’s torment, I melt away into the growing parade of walkers.
In an out-of-state marathon, I experimented with run/walking it. The race started with mid-morning with temperatures climbing into the low 50s, 35oF cooler than my past Florida marathons. That time I readjusted my expectations and I was going to run/walk it. I did, finishing with my fastest marathon time five minutes shy of five hours.
Did I mention I was slow? Does that really matter? Probably not.
The 2010 Walt Disney World (WDW) marathon will be my fifth. Preparing for marathons is an evolving process as I am still in the process of figuring it out. I do think placing regular walk breaks into a marathon, Gallowalking, is one of the keys to make it less daunting, at least for me. This year I will make the following changes in preparing for this one:
- Run five days a week instead of six.
- Begin long runs no earlier than 5:30 a.m. I need to get accustomed to feeling the sun beating down on me.
- Run/walk long runs 14 miles or more. If the long run to be run/walked, also run/walk the run the day before.
I will attempt to follow Hal Higdon’s Intermediate II training schedule which is freely available on the web here. Looking at the weekend running distances for each Saturday and Sunday, we have the following graph.
The WDW marathon is on Sunday, January 10th, 2010. Working 18 weeks back, this gives me a start date of Monday, September 13th 7th, 2009. This year problem weekends that normally conflict with the schedule are avoided as those weeks involve long runs of 12 miles:
- Thanksgiving falls on week 12.
- The Gulf Beaches half marathon falls on week 14.
- Christmas falls on week 16.
I find weeks 10 through 15 challenging as the weekend mileage peeks at 30 miles, and I downgrade to the easier intermediate schedule in attempt keep up with it. This year, I’ll “hang on” by run/walking long runs at week 7 and carrying that forward to the end of the training program.
Come race day, I will run/walk the marathon as planned.