2016 Marathon Training Begins!

This past week saw the start of “official” marathon training for me.  The 12^th marked 4 months until the South Padre Island Marathon, my first marathon of the 2016-2017 marathon season.  I say “official” because I’m not going to map out a training plan.  I’m just going to try and do 1 speed workout run per week, 1 long slow run per week, and then log 1-2 medium distance races, preferably with one of those being a tempo-type run.  My goal will also be to log as many miles as I can without injuring myself.  Right now, my monthly mileage goal for this month will be 90-100 miles.  In August, I’ll bump it to 100-110 miles.  In September, it’ll go to 110-130 miles. Then, in October, 130-150 miles.  Starting that final Saturday of October, I’ll be in taper and just running easy miles and nothing over 8 miles at a time.

 

I accidentally kicked off week 1 of training with a little mini run streak.  In case you haven’t ever heard of a run streak, it’s just where you run at least 1 mile every day for either a set amount of time (a week, a month, whatever) or until you no longer feel like doing your streak and/or you get hurt and have to stop your streak.  I have always said I’ll never run more than 4 days in a row.  Well, never say never, because I did that this week.  As of this morning, I have run 6 days in a row.  My shortest run was 2 miles and my longest was 10. 

 

I’m really excited for this training cycle and for running my marathons.  I have BIG goals for this season’s marathons.  Here they are:

• South Padre Island—finish in 4:20:00 or faster

• San Antonio RNR—I don’t really have a finish time goal for this one as it’s only 3 weeks after SPI.  So this is going to be a fun run for me.

• Austin—finish in 4:10:00 or faster

 

Also, I may have a 4^th marathon in there, but it’s an unofficial marathon because it’s not an actual organized event.  There is no registration fee, no medal, no water stops.  It’s self-supporting, but there will be a group of people running it together.  It’s part of the Running the Parks series that this guy is doing.  He’s running a marathon distance in all 59 national parks in the US.