Monday, April 7, 2008

training

Okay, so let's talk training, ladies. I have looked over our schedule and let me give my humble opinion. I disagree with running a long distance every weekend (9, 10, 11, 12 miles). With the minimal experience I have had training for a race, we have always run a long distance one weekend followed by a recover semi-long distance run the following weekend. The training during the week was very similar to what our schedule looks like except it was always for time (e.g. 30, 45 or 60 minute runs).

Here is an example for all of us visual peeps:

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Saturday
40 min. 50 min. rest/cross 35 min. 9 miles
45 min. 60 min. rest/cross 40 min. 6 miles
35 min. 50 min. rest/cross 40 min. 10 miles
45 min. 65 min. rest/cross 40 min. 6 miles
35 min. 50 min. rest/cross 35 min. 11 miles

So, I guess to get to the point. I don't think that we should do the consecutive long runs every Saturday for 4 weeks. I'm just afraid that is over-training. I have researched other training schedules online & they all have a recover week so to speak. When jess and I were talking about this on Saturday, I asked to look at the original schedule that we are using before the changes were made. The week day runs match-up on both schedules and the weekend runs look like this (starting with this saturday, week 13) with what our current schedule suggests in parenthesis...

7 miles (7 miles)
7 miles (9 miles)
7 miles (10 miles)
12 miles (11 miles)
6 miles (12 miles)
4 miles (4 miles).

I am not sure if any of this is making sense. I'm just typing as I think. For me, I am going to follow more closely the original schedule. I may even run 6 or 5 miles tomorrow instead of 7 (I'm not sure what that is all about). So, here is what my schedule is most likely going to be for the remainder of the training:


Monday Tuesday Wed. Thurs. Saturday
week13 4 miles 5 miles rest 5 miles 7 miles
week 14 4 miles 5 miles rest 3 miles 5 miles
week 15 5 miles 5 miles rest 4 miles 7 miles
week 16 3 miles 4 miles rest 4 miles 11or 12 mi.
week 17 4 miles 5 miles rest 5 miles 6 miles
week 18 5 miles 4 miles 5 miles 5 miles 4 miles
week 19 4 miles 4 miles rest rest rest
week 20 RACE DAY!







The changes I made from the original schedule are in blue. I guess each person just needs to do what is best for them. Whatever you choose, please just take care of you! remember to stretch, hydrate and allow your body time to recover (in other words if you miss a few runs, don't try to jam pack & run 7 days in a row). That's all from Momma Amy. ;)

Happpy Running!

p.s. tonight's run went well. as soon as aaron got home from work we headed out the door. we ran 4 miles in 38 minutes (super speedy!). I'm pretty sure the first 1.5 miles being downhill or flat really helped. The last 1.5 were all a steady uphill but we kept a good pace. I was shocked at how quickly 4 miles passed. I'm not sure how I'm feeling about the 7 miles scheduled for tomorrow. As mentioned above, I may just do 5 or 6 miles.

4 comments:

brooke said...

OK, I think that you are right. In my head the Hal program I did last time increased a mile each Sat. Looking back at it, it doesn't really. Well it sort of does but it has these weeks where you do "race" which is when you would do a race or do a run at race pace and those are shorter. So I guess I didn't really increase a mile a week. I guess we should do some changing again. We have PLENTY of time left and in reality, a lot of half programs have the longest run at 10 so we are in a good place. I would like to do 12 just so I KNOW I can do it but I think its fine to change things around. I am going to be out of town on the 12 week anyway, so I was planning on doing some changes anyway. I was talking to my dad about this and he agreed that we have plenty of time, we've all built up to a really good base and from this point its a lot more about maintaining that base than about really pushing yourself. I think I may rearrange the plan to suit our traveling, accommodate my sister's wedding, and avoid over training, etc.

jess said...

YEAH! this all sounds perfect to me.
like i said before, i am really confident that i can do this and the next few weeks are all about maintaining (and not getting hurt) for me. i am pretty sure i will follow with what you do amy, or close to it. and i am also pretty sure that i don't want to run 7 miles tomorrow. i don't believe in 2 long runs in one week. that just gives me 2 days to dread instead of 1.

kristen said...

hmmmmm.....I don't have previous training/race experience to compare with - I did look at quite a few other schedules today, including Hal Higdon, Jeff Galloway, runners world, and some others. They are all quite different, with some key commonalities. I think I'll have to ponder and pray about it and get back to ya'll. I am definitely flexible though...

amy said...

I was just thinking that we should come up with a training schedule that we all agree on & do together. I know that a large part of the motivation to complete this comes from all of us doing it together. What do you ladies think?