I registered for the Bay State Marathon tonight. The race is Lowell, Mass., on Oct. 18. I’ve been planning to run it for a couple of months now but I waited to sign up – maybe I was just procrastinating, maybe I was anxious to make sure I was really going to be able to get back up to speed for the training after February’s disappointment. I have.
I went from an informal but serious ramping back up of mileage into the Pfitzinger program a few weeks back. And I’m faster than I ever was during the peak of my training for Portland (which I finished well), and running more miles than I did during the peak of my hideous winter training for Hyannis (which I did not finish due to an IT band injury at mile 18 which forced me to drop at mile 23). Those two stats, tracked in digital training logs, have me feeling cautiously optimistic. I think I know what went right at Portland (methodical, hard training, lots of miles), what went wrong at Hyannis (not enough rest after Portland led to injuries, led to sloppy training and too few miles), and how I’m not only going to squeeze the training into my busy schedule (lots of night and early morning runs, mainly), but use it to make me more productive across the board. Anyhow, Bay State here I come.
Tags: baystate marathon, marathon, pfitzinger, Running
Nothing like miles to get you into peak fitness.
Agreed! It’s just a question of finding that perfect balance of running maximum miles possible without causing breakdown!
Good luck at the Bay State Marathon. Glad to hear you are following the Pfitzinger plan. I followed the high mileage version of that plan for Boston and it seemed to help keep me focused. I did change his recommended shorter interval speed work to mile repeats, which I feel are better suited to marathon preparation. Also, I rearranged some of the days of the week to better fit my schedule, but basically it was his plan. I created a spreadsheet to help me log my progress against the plan. If you are interested, I’ll e-mail it to you. Just send me a note at fduchossois at gmail.com.
Hey Frank, thanks for the note! I’m on the 55-60 mile week peak plan, so not doing as many miles, but it seems to be working great (with a bit of rearranging, but not too much). Love the rest weeks built in. I’ll drop you a note about the chart.