First off, this post in no way is meant to be bragging. I know there are plenty of runners that do much more than this and by much more, I mean WAY MORE (i.e. 50 in 50). This actually happened by accident – well O.K. not an accident but more so by circumstance.

A year ago this Christmas, I talked my sister into running her first marathon at the Walt Disney World Marathon in January. I’ve been running now for 4 years but I’d only run one marathon and that was at the end of 2006. Worried that I would fail supporting her thru 26.2 miles, I decided on running the full Rock-n-Roll Las Vegas Marathon (more so for confidence than anything else). After a great year of training and racing, it didn’t even dawn on me that the races were merely 36 days apart.

The biggest hurdle in this whole thing has been the training. The shortest training program I’d done preceding a race was 12 weeks. After a week off following the Las Vegas Marathon, that left me with only 4 weeks of training. With over 750+ miles and 3 races under my belt this year, I know I have the strength for a 4 week schedule but it still doesn’t seem like enough. Using the trusted Runner’s World SmartCoach, it whipped out this maintenance schedule:

Week     Mon.     Tues.     Wed.     Thur.     Fri.     Sat.     Sun.
1             6 mi.                   5 mi.                            10 mi.
2             6 mi.                   5 mi.                            12 mi.
3             5 mi.                   5 mi.                            14 mi.
4                          3 mi.                    5 mi.     3 mi.              RACE

The absence of a 20-miler kind of freaks me out but the last thing I want to do is be overly fatigued or worse yet get an injury before my sister’s race. This is definitely one race I wouldn’t miss for the world!!!

Have you done a short training session for a race? If so please share what you did.

RMFR

The one thing I promised myself when I started this is that I wouldn’t give advice. I’m still not going to give advice, but I will share how I train. I’ve used and borrowed various training tips so if what I do can help in anyway – I’m all for it.

The one thing I’ve learned since I’ve been running is that with my schedule, I will never be able to follow a training program word-for-word. When I first started out, I knew nothing – and according to others, I still don’t. My first training program I downloaded from the Grandma’s Marathon website. It was my first time training for any race so I tried to follow it to a T. It was a 6-day a week training schedule with a long run every Saturday. 6-days a week took a huge toll on my body – especially for a fat guy. I ended up with bursitis in my hip and had to take 3-weeks off. I finished off the program the best I could but new I needed to make changes for my next race.

I started reading the running magazines and ended up reworking one of Jeff Galloway’s training programs. Jeff is a great read if you’re just starting out. His training strategies are based on non-runners just starting off. To this day, I still adhere to his walk break strategy. It helps me enjoy my runs more. If I don’t enjoy running…I just won’t do it.

Recently, I’ve used the Runners World SmartCoach. It gives me an “idea” of what my mileage should be. I like the 3-weeks hard/1-week easy approach. It also gives you different levels of how hard you want to train. I currently try to do 3 runs a week and 3-weeks before a race that will increase to 4. If for any reason I feel an injury coming on, I’ll back it off immediately. I’ve run races injured before and it’s really not fun AT ALL!!!

There’s another interesting training approach I read in Bart Yasso’s book “My Life On The Run”. He calls it “The Perfect 10″ in which you do cycles. Each cycle consists of 10 days and depending on the length of race you’re doing includes between 4-5 cycles (2 of which are tapers). I haven’t tried it yet but grab the book and read it. It’s a great read.

Now that I’ve been running for 3+ years, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions:

1) Nobody can write the perfect running program for you. Your schedule changes, you get sick, injuries can slow you down and sometimes you just can’t get out the door. I try to be fluid and flexible.

2) NEVER MISS YOUR LONG RUN. I’ve learned that I can skip a pace workout but if you miss to many of your long runs…you’re screwed!!!

3) You can’t think it’s over if you miss days. I did that my first race and instead of working harder to make up miles I let them pass and figured I’d just set my goals lower.

Whatever you decide to do with your training, make it personal. You know your body and goals better than anyone – just listen to yourself and it will all work out.

RMFR