Ho John Lee’s Weblog

Time for a followup. I received my “Last Minute Instructions” from the Big Sur Marathon today. It’s on April 24th, a little more than two weeks away, so it’s time to take inventory and start planning. One of the things I like about marathon training is that 26.2 miles is far enough to require a bit of humility and honesty about oneself. In a 5K or 10K there are many naturally athletic individuals who could muddle through the event without training properly.

In a marathon, any number of things can randomly go wrong during training and the actual race, but there’s also almost no way for someone to simply show up and finish the event without putting in the time on the road. You can’t fake your way through a marathon.

This training cycle hasn’t been terrible, but it could be going better. Compared with last year, I’m probably in better running condition. Given time and scenery, like in Maui a couple of weeks ago, I don’t seem to have any trouble knocking out 9-12 miles for a daily run. I also got through 18 miles out there in rain, wind, heat, and more rain with only one gel, after extending a planned 12 mile run.

I also noted that on Oahu, I was able to run the ascent on the Diamond Head loop with relative ease compared with last year. The ascent at Hurricane Point on the Big Sur course starts at mile 11 and is around 2 miles of 5% grade, with a bit of 6-7% near the end. Last year I recall that part as being easier to deal with than the smaller hills at around mile 22-23. I really need to go take a look at the course map and see where and how long those last few hills are.

Last year I felt better prepared, putting in 3 20-mile runs and weeks of hill and pace intervals. This year I’ve done some hill intervals and some pace intervals, no 20-mile runs, but lots of longer easy runs and a few longish LT runs, something like 30-60 minutes at 7:30 to 8:00 pace. I think I felt like I was working harder last year, partly because I was, but also partly because many of the scheduled runs were more difficult for me to complete last year. I used to routinely bring water and gels on any run over 6 miles last year, and this year I have only taken gels on runs over 10 miles, as I simply haven’t needed them.

My main concern is that I haven’t put in the really long runs this time around. Endurance training isn’t exactly something you can do at the last minute, either. On the plus side - I’ve done many more 10-16 mile runs than on the previous training cycle, and they have all gone far easier this year. On the minus side - I don’t have any current data on how my body will hold up beyond 3 hours, which is distracting.

I think I’m going to end up aiming for something like 8:45 to 9:00 pace for the beginning until I see how things are going. That’s well below what the pace predictor says I might be able to do, but I’m not planning to take much downtime after the marathon either. That would put me somewhere around 3:45 to 4:00 hours at the finish. Assuming the weather cooperates.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 6th, 2005 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.