Progress - A new PR

This past Sunday, I ran my 3rd Grand Rapids Marathon. I had a great training cycle that gave me the confidence to target a finish in the 4:08-4:15 range. I ran a 20 mile training run that had me really looking at the 4:08 mark.

Well, Sunday went real well, and I finished with a new PR of 4:06. That beat last year's PR by over 33 minutes. I spent nearly 22 miles of the race pacing to beat 4 hours. I'm now recovering from a great race and will spend some time trying to decide what to do over the winter and next year. Part of me wants to stick with the one marathon a year plan, and another part of me wants to take next year off and focus on shorter distances to work on my speed. My weight is down in the 180's and I see some room to maybe push 175 even. I thinned out nicely during this training cycle and want to keep that weight off this winter.

One thing that I took from this last marathon is that I now see how some of these faster times are attainable with a more consistent training cycle and simply adding more mileage. I spent much of my training cycle adding weekly mileage on to a modest base of 20-25 miles per week. I hit 35+ weekly miles and topped out over 40 miles 3 weeks of this cycle. I did do a lot of 5 day a week running, but honestly, I did more 4 run weeks than I would have liked. I simply made a point of hitting my mid length runs during the week as well as my long runs. The shorter 3-5 mile runs became expendable as I tried to juggle a busy schedule. I still don't see myself pursuing 2 runs a day, but if I could be more consistent at the 5 days a week, I could probably put the needed mileage in to take the next step in my time improvements. The idea of this blog is to go from 5 hours to 3:10, and I have made some considerable improvements.

So, at this very moment, in an idea world, I would rest this week, then start slowly getting back into running next week with some short runs. Maybe put a 9-12 mile week in next week. I would like to then get to a 5 day a week run schedule and put 4 runs of 5 miles and a longer run in the 8-10 mile range. If I can work my speed where I could comfortably do 35-40 minute 5 mile runs, I wouldn't mind doing a midweek 8 mile run, 3 5 mile runs, and a longer 8-12 mile run on the weekend. Then I could target a more aggressive training cycle next Spring.

Having run 3 marathons now, all during the same week in October each year, I think I would like to run a Spring Marathon. There are now three good options for me in May each year that require minimal travel. I felt a lot of stress to stay healthy and avoid a flu bug that seemed to really go around this year this last marathon. If I could schedule a Spring marathon, I'd have the October date to fall back on, or add to my schedule if needed.