Unlike #1, where I was excited to do something I'd never done before, and marathon #2, where I sort of skated through, #3 is going to be somewhat challenging. Why?
1) I'm training for Big Sur, the hilliest marathon in the country, by running in Chicago, the least hilly place ever.
2) I'm trying to fold a decent amount of cycling in. Unlike #2's once-a-week, or #1's no cycling at all, for #3 I'm going to be doing 4 hours/week on trainer as part of an indoor class. That's pretty hefty, and forces the schedule to shuffle a little.
3) I for some reason chose Hal's Intermediate I, a training program that has only 1 rest day, and then added the cycling on top of that. Erm. It's easy to put this stuff on paper, it's a little harder to actually do it. Thanks to Bob for helping make this fit together, but it's still a pretty tall order. So, we'll give it a shot. If this is v3.0, v3.1 might be dropping one run a week, and there are ways to make v3.2 too, if I'm burning out. But why not shoot the moon?
So, I'm already running at 10:30 pace, no problem, which will get me to the 4:35 I wanted last year (before I got sick and puked during the marathon- no joke). BUT with those hills, who knows what will happen. My goal is to finish in the 6 hour time limit- I really hope that's not an issue, or I shouldn't even be trying- but be comfortable running a decent pace and be able to enjoy the scenery. Really, I'd like to come out of this in May with a fun race under my belt but better equipped for MTB season.
And so this morning the program started, on the shortest day of the year, with a soft dusting of snow hiding the ice on the sidewalks.
Ridden and Reviewed Kona Libre CR
1 year ago