I'm back! I haven't posted to my running blog since my Tunnel Light Race Report last September. In retrospect, racing 3 marathons in the span of 9 months -- each of which included a full 14-week training cycle may not have been the wisest thing. After running a 3:35 last September in which I felt my fitness had peaked and began to decline in early August, I really fell into a "training pit" managing very little running output the last few months of 2016 I don't think it was as much a lack of motivation versus me simply needing a mental break after so much high intensity training over the preceding 9 months. I started to really re-engage with my training while we were on Maui for two weeks over Christmas and New Year's 2016/2017 getting runs in nearly every day; albeit the quality of those runs were low as I'd lost even more fitness than I expected.
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| Family vacation to Cabo San Lucas April 2017 to the Resort at Pedregal. My three year old daughter Jayden snapped this retro-looking picture at Mi Casa in downtown Cabo. |
I'm planning on racing only one marathon this year. The September Tunnel Light Marathon which I will run for the second consecutive year and use as my attempt to re-qualify for the 2018 Boston Marathon. I ran a disappointing 3:35 there last September after hitting the half marathon mark in just over 1:41:00 and then fading over the last 10 miles as I hadn't prepared for the extra pounding my quads would take on a somewhat rocky 1.5% decline route. I'll be better prepared this year doing a number of hard downhill tempo runs on that very route so as to prepare my quads for the extra wear and tear on race morning.
What makes this year extra special is that my wife Vennessa will be running her first half marathon in early September (Labor Day Half Marathon in Redmond, WA) and my son Ethan (who just ran a 4:56 1600 PR) will be running his first marathon with me at the Tunnel Light Marathon in September. It will be a late Spring and Summer filled with lots of training and run talk which is fun when it's at the family level.
My approach to training this year is to continue to build on my aerobic base while increasing my running volume to 6 - 7 hours and over 40 hours a week. At this point in mid-May, my annualized weekly running volume is just about to tick up over 30 miles as I begin to pick up my training intensity starting to touch 40+ mile weeks again. From a training strategy perspective, I plan to stay focused on (re)building my speed base over shorter distances in May and June from the 100m, 400m, 1000m levels at sub-5k pace rates before transitioning into more of the strength-endurance portion of my marathon training where interval duration will expand to 1600's, 2000's, 3200's, etc. From a tempo running perspective I will incorporate my standard progression from 8, 9 and 10 mile tempos throughout but will also build more tempo and marathon race pace simulations into runs where I've already run 10, 12, or 16 miles before then speeding up to tempo pace. I find that the Hanson's method of marathon training - focusing on simulating the last 16 miles of the marathon from a stress perspective is what my body responds best to when it comes to translating months of training into a strong race-morning performance. I recently heard someone say it was important to not be "a training day hero and race day zero". Appropriate.
I'm still thinking about specific race goals for this year, but in summary I hope to re-qualify for the Boston Marathon which means I probably need to run a sub 3:27:00 in the marathon. I also hope to remain injury free which is always a challenge as well as drop another 10-12 lbs of weight through the summer.
Stay tuned as the 2017 racing season begins!
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