Training Preparation

I'm officially a running geek. Well even more so than I already was. I ordered Pfitzinger's Advanced Marathoning book last night. I'm still sort of figuring out what I want to do until the new year now that my official 2010 marathon is over. However, I'm starting to think more and more that I want to do 2 marathons next year. This would be in early May, the inaugural Kalamazoo Marathon. And depending on how that went, I'd still look at doing Grand Rapids in October.

So, if I want to run the Kalamazoo Marathon on May 8th, my official first week of training would start January 2nd. That means I'm in a 9 week period of no official training agenda. Well, I suppose that is not completely true. I need to work on my base mileage and do some strength training, so maybe it would be worthwhile to create a pre-training training plan.

I think it is important to still run on the weekend, but primarily my workouts will happen during the week since I have a full hour of lunch to utilize. I'd really like to hit a 3-5 mile run each day and occasionally get out for a longer run in the 7-8 mile range. Every other weekend I'd like to push that to at least 10. This doesn't mean I won't run on other weekends, but I'll probably do shorter treadmill runs.

Any workdays that I do shorter 3-4 mile runs, I think I'll spend 10-15 minutes with various weight workouts. I'd still like to strengthen my core, but also would like to start toning and firming up other areas that I don't work out from running such as the shoulders, chest, and arms. I am also looking at starting a quick evening workout routine like the 200 Situp Challenge or the 100 pushup challenge.

My weight goal for the next 9 weeks would be to get comfortably under 190 lbs. I'm still between 193 and 196 on any weigh in day. Time to shed those lazy 5lbs off.

I'm going to work on a base building running plan next.