Fresh of my new found motivation of NOT getting into Boston I knew my next steps were to stalk a victim and sharpen my tools. Quickly I started stalking silently through the tall grasses of the internet in search of the perfect race to set my sights on. Being the dork I am, I created a spreadsheet to evaluate my potential kills, who doesn't love a good spreadsheet? Communists, that's who. I wanted something fast, flat, preferrably driveable, and with a good crowd. Fast and flat for the physical part of running, and a good crowd for the mental part. I will NEVER forget how the crowd in Jax motivated me and literally moved me to tears.....I craved that again. I also wanted something early in 2012 so I could start training relatively soon. I reviewed many, many races, but in the end I found "The One". The Yuengling Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach, St. Patty's day weekend 2012. I've run in Va. Beach before, it's nice and flat, and this race was big enough that a rowdy crowd was a given.
Now that I had picked a race, the next steps were goal setting and scuplting a training plan to get me there. Setting goals with running are a double edged sword. If I set something too agressive and miss it, I'd be crushed. Set something too easy, and I might train a little too lightly. Something I had been using that seemed to be the most accurate and "safe" thing to do was using the Runnersworld.com calculator. Basically you plug in a race time for any distance race you've done before and this calculates what your projected times in other races would be. That being said, I had crushed a couple races earlier this summer, setting PR's in both the 5k and 10k by a lot. I plugged those times into the calculator and was amazed, and terrified of what I saw..........
Based on my recent 5K (Human Race in Waynesville, June) of 18:24, it was conceiveable that I could run a marathon in 2:56:19!!! My first instinct was "yeah right", but I checked the projected 10k time and saw 38:21......I had run the Independence Day 10K in Boyne this summer in 38:26.....this was doable!! 2:56 was a 6:40 per mile pace......which was my best 10K pace in January of 2011...weird to think of how far I'd come in just 11 months from then.
With my goal set, it was time to figure out just how the hell I was going to get in shape for this. I needed a training plan that would turn me into a machine. If Rocky, and Prefontaine had a baby with wonder woman (because we need a womb strong enough of course) and she listend to jock jams and G&R during her pregnancy and then that baby grew up training with Usain Bolt.....that's who I wanted to be.
My plan to get there looked like this:
Monday: 5-6 easy miles during lunch, core training and heavy weightlifting
Tuesday: Speed work ranging from 6-11 miles
Wednesday: 6 easy miles during lunch
Thursday: Tempo runs / repeats at lunch, core training, and taking Maura's "power" class at the Rush
Friday: 6-7 miles easy
Saturday: Long run using the "step up, step back" approach, starting at 9 miles, then alternating weeks going up 2 miles and reaching 23 miles by week 17.
Sunday: Rest
It was 831.98 miles in total, 20wks long. It was gonna be tough, it was gonna take time, but I knew that if I didn't follow this precisely, I wouldn't have a chance at 2:56.........TIME TO GO KICK SOME ASS!!
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