12 Weeks to Toral de los Vados 2005

[Riazor Blue]

Here we go then. Twelve weeks of hard training for this year’s marathon. Last year I seem to remember writing something about not running at this distance this year. I’ve written some rubbish over the last year and a half. I have, however, been asking myself why I want to put myself through this training. Why I intend to devote so much time to ‘training’. Since Toral de los Vados last year my ‘training’ has involved running because I enjoy it and maybe sticking in a faster session here and there in preparation for whatever race was coming up. Readers may also recall various training plans have come and gone, usually discarded after a week or two because I cannot be ‘arsed’ to follow them. The one thing that has stuck, and I do find really useful is the HRM.
For this marathon I was looking for a plan that was firstly, not too long and secondly didn’t mean running huge distances every week. I also wanted a plan that incorporated the use of my monitor. I looked at a few plans, but most seemed to be between sixteen and twenty-four weeks long. Far too long to be ‘forced’ to go running. This one I found is twelve weeks, with two speed sessions and one long run per week. There are of course other runs included, but the ‘quality’ is based on these sessions. I’m hill free in this plan aswell, as Toral is flat, it should not matter. The plan is not based on heart rate, but on 5km, 10km and marathon pace. Handily, I’ve worked out my corresponding heart rates for these distances, so I have made the conversions myself. Distances each week range from 64km to 96km.
My Intention is to post my schedule for the week every Monday, and we’ll see how I get on.

And to this week then: this is what I hope to do:

Monday: 6km @ 150 bpm
Tuesday: 8km @ 150 bpm
Wednesday: 3km warm up, 5 x 800m @ 185 bpm with 400m jog recoveries, 3km cool down.
Thursday: 8km @ 150 bpm
Friday: 3km warm up, 5km @ 180 bpm, 3km cool down.
Saturday: Rest
Sunday: Vig-Bay ½ Marathon @ 170 bpm (marathon pace).

Sunday’s session is different as I’m in a race, but as I ran hard in Porriño, I’ll be taking it a bit easier than normal. I saw on some converter site that I should be able to run a marathon at 170 beats per minute, so I’ll see what sort of time that would give me in a half marathon. I have a couple more halves between now and Toral, so hopefully, I will be able to see some improvement.

Tuesday: As you can see, I failed miserably at the first hurdle - posting on Monday. Still, I've got two days done and dusted. A couple of pleasent trots along the Paseo Maritimo in the sunshine. Only 92 more days to go....