Marathon Training Plan

Well, after much research, deliberation and many revisions I think I have my 2011 Chicago Marathon Training plan.  I've gone back and forth between what I thought might be too many hard workouts and what seemed like not enough, now erring slightly on the not enough side choosing to be slightly under-trained but fresh for the marathon rather than over trained, tired and possibly injured.

Runs & Pacing:

Most of my pacing is derived from mcmillanrunning.com's running calculator using my 1:23:30 half marathon time.  For the longer runs heart rate will be a bigger determining factor of pace as my heart rate zone seems to give a slightly faster pace sometimes, and as the summer gets warmer here in Miami, paces might go out the window.  Depending on how the training is going I may switch over to use my 5k time for the Cruise and Speed Interval paces.

Notes about the Plan:

• I've moved my long runs to Saturdays in order to give myself at least 1 weekend night with the possibility of going out (though I'm guessing I'll be pretty tired most weekends.)  There's also a new group at a near by running store doing long runs on Saturdays so I  might have some running partners for some of the runs.

• For the first half of the plan I have easy runs on Thursdays.  This is to give me a chance to occasionally run with the Hash - junk miles (with beer!) but a fun group.  When the weekend miles start getting more serious and requiring more focus, Thursday will become a rest day to prepare for the Friday/Saturday run and easy runs will move to Tuesday.

• There are 4 key workouts in this plan, the two 20 mile fast finish (FF) runs, the 23 miler (which will be slower with Veronica, but on hills in Ithaca) and the 13 mile Marathon Pace run.  Since this is my first marathon build up I've decided to go with only 3 runs of 20+ miles (instead of the 4 I originally had) to make sure I avoid injury and see how I handle the miles.

• Depending on how my legs are feeling, the easy runs on Mondays may occasionally have some marathon pace or tempo pace miles mixed in to get a little more stamina work in the schedule.

• There is a step down week every 3rd week to let the body rest up for the next build up.  This is a Hal Higdon strategy and I've used his long run schedule for the build ups.

My only concern with the plan at this point is that it might be a little easy on the threshold work, with more focus on endurance.  With this being my first Marathon, I won't really have an idea if I'll be able to handle my target pace for 26.2 miles until about 24 miles into the marathon...  Not something I can fix at this point, so I have my schedule, now I just need to stick to it!