Marathon By 40

I know cardio training requires you to slow down, but this seems ridiculous.

Keith recently posted on his personal experience training to increase aerobic capacity. He does a good job describing it like this:

One of the most important muscle groups for endurance athletes is the heart and lungs—the muscles that define aerobic capacity.  Simply put, aerobic capacity is your body’s ability to transport the necessary amount of oxygen to your muscles for them to operate efficiently for long periods of time.  Aerobic capacity is also called “base” for short and is often referred to as an endurance athlete’s “engine.”

The Run/Walk Half Marathon training program that I’m starting on 12/29 calls for my run/walks to stay between 60%-75% max heart rate. I know that my runs regularly push me way beyond that. Reading Keith’s post and knowing that my upcoming plan calls for measured pace, I decided to experiment with just how slow I would have to go to stay within the plan’s boundaries.

When I went out for my 5K today, I purposely watched my watch to slow down when I crossed 75%. Ugh. I wasn’t able to sustain a pace faster than 16′38″ without pushing my BPM above 75%. I wasn’t “running” at all. I couldn’t even jog for more than 100 yards without going above the limit.

This leaves me with a quandary on how to approach my upcoming plan. I will likely:

1. Stick to the 60%<>75% levels for the remaining 10 days of the 30-in-30 streak to see if I can improve my pace within this boundary, and / or
2. Ignore the aerobic training plan for now, and train as usual for the half, and / or
3. Get an aerobic assessment after the race to see what my true max is, and follow a rate-improvement plan before my training plan starts for the White Rock Marathon in December.

I certainly want to improve my aerobic capacity. But do I have the patience to work on it before the half marathon in April?

Any fellow Nike+ runner is familiar with the cheery encouragement of your iPod chiming in with the “Half-way point!” declaration if you set your workout to a specified distance. It’s always encouraging for me to hear, knowing that my goal for the day is (figuratively) all down hill from then on.

Well, this morning I completed day 15 of the streak. I’ve gone 27.03 miles in those 15 days, and hope to increase that mileage over the last 15. The basic pattern has been to run a 5K at least 3 days a week, running or walking a mile on all other days.

For the most part, it’s been easier than I imagined. There have been one or two days that I didn’t get up in the morning and I’ve realized just before dinner “Doh! I need to go run.” On those nights I simply walk the mile circuit around the neighborhood to meet my self-imposed requirement for the goal.

This morning was particularly rewarding. It was about 30° before the sun came up. While it was expected, it was still a shock to the senses considering the high yesterday was 80°. Anyway, I wore the appropriate layers and headed out for a 5K (including 5 minute warm-up walk). I’ve been doing these 5Ks as 3/1 running / walking intervals, and my times have been slowly decreasing over the month. My final run this morning felt particularly strong.

I have started to feel slight throbbing in my shins in the afternoons of my 5K runs, especially when I actually run on the mile days. I’ve started to only walk on the off days, and I think that’s helping.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into the long-run habit this weekend with another 10K.

So for the next 15 days, keep running!

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I spent more time reading about runningthan I actually ran. But, it was time well spent as I was informed and inspired to plan my goals for 2009. My plans (more detail on these later) are to run a half-marathon in April, and to Run The Rock in December 2009.

To prepare for the half, I need to start a 14-week plan on January 5th. This plan includes running / cross-training every most days of the week for 14 weeks straight. In order to get that many workouts completed, I’ll have to get up early and do them as the first priority of the day.

The plan must start in January. It’s cold in January. It’s even colder before the sun comes up.

Now I realize this isn’t Chicago, or Pittsburgh, or Maine. We aren’t likely to get snow like the picture up above. But considering how warm it is the rest of the year, it feels very, very cold for a warm-weather guy like me. So, I need to do some (getting up early and bearing the cold) conditioning before I start (distance running) conditioning.

To prepare for January, I’m taking on a “30 in 30″ goal - to run at least 30 miles in December by running at least one mile each day for 30 consecutive days. Some days I’ll certainly run more, but the point isn’t really about the distance. The idea is to get used to getting up before the sun and getting out for a decent run; to create a meaningful yet achievable streak. If I can do this every day all month, it should be easier to tackle the discipline of the half-marathon plan.

I got this idea from bigRahn who just completed a very impressive streak himself and vicariously pointed me to the streakers. I’ll be following their rules:

A running streak is defined by USRSA as running at least one continuous mile within each calendar day under one’s own body power (without the utilization of any type of health or mechanical aid other than prosthetic devices).

My only caveat is that I’ll be run/walking, meaning I can mix in walking. The goal is to get my rear-end outside, not to break any world records for speed.

So far, so good. I started on Monday (Dec 1) and have run every morning since. Considering this is day 3, I’m 10% of the way there. Keep track of my progress over at RunnerPlus, and give me heck if you see me miss a day.

Now, off to get some sleep so I can get up and run in the freezing temps they forecasted for the morning!