toeing the start

52 days away from my first of 5 marathons for the year. On March 17, I will be toeing up to the starting line having logged about 1,000 miles of training runs going into the race. The race for that day is no big secret, as I look to take on what I hope to be my best marathon at the HONDA LA MARATHON. This race is a little different not because world class elite runner Deena Kastor will be running the LA Marathon, but the training in which I have put into preparing for this marathon.

When I decided to start training for the HONDA LA MARATHON back on December 10, 2012, I have continued to run and train each and every day. I have logged plenty of miles averaging a little over 70 miles per week. Going into this week of training the high mileage workouts have looked something like this:

post trail run along the WS Trail

Dec. 10: 61 miles

Dec. 17: 58 miles

Dec. 24: 72 miles

Dec. 31: 72 miles

Jan. 7: 79 miles

Jan. 14: 73 miles

The first phase of the training focused on speed workouts along with tempo runs, long runs, and recovery runs. These next seven weeks of training will have a ‘strength’ component to the training while still including the tempo, long run and recovery runs. Prior to this week the intervals I ran ranged in distances from 400 meters to 1600 meters on Tuesdays. Moving forward I will be increasing intervals between the distances of 1 mile to 3 miles for the Tuesday workouts. With continuing with higher mileage weeks and longer intervals, my most recent 7 days of training included the following:

January 23: 5 miles easy @ 7:56 pace

January 22: 10.26 miles total - (strength workout) 1.2-mile warm-up, 6 x 1 mile (6:51, 6:37, 6:45, 6:42, 6:44, 6:49) with 400 meter repeats, 1.81 mile cool down

January 21: 18.48 miles – this was run on the Western State Trail.

January 20: 18.09 miles total - 9 easy out, 7 miles at long pace (7:38/mi), 1 mile hard (6:40), 1-mile cool down

January 19: 4.1 miles easy @ 7:56 pace

January 18: 7.01 miles easy @ 7:50 pace on a treadmill

January 17: 9.93 miles total - 1 mile warm-up, 8 mi tempo (6:59/mi), .93 mi cool down

After this next phase there will be a week of tapering, then it is GO TIME at the HONDA LA MARATHON.  If you cannot tell I am very excited to get my first marathon in for the year. I know there are plenty of things that could happen that day, but those things I am not in control of. I am in control of my training, my physical and mental preparation going into the race to make sure that everything is covered that I can do to run my best possible race that day. Even with putting the work in a little luck comes into play on race day such as weather conditions, my own physical, mental and emotional feelings that day. However, when I toe up to the start line I know there will be no regrets or wishing I had done something different when it comes to training.