Ok – week 1 of 18 for training for the Manitoba Marathon on Father’s Day.
Three runs this week on the treadmill – couple short sessions outside with the pups and some snowshoeing with the wife and kids today. I am still short on my miles but I will talk a bit more about that later.
For now, here is a bit of an update / set of thoughts on where I am and where I need to get to:
I am going back to training as if I am starting from scratch – because even though I did the Dopey Challenge back in January I still feel like I am really not at marathon levels. Or at least not where I want to be.
So I have decided to step back and do a more standard/structured 18 week training program – I will get it up on the blog before too long but essentially I am going to be following a modified version of the Hal Higdon Intermediate plan. 5 days a week – 2 short, 2 medium and a long run each week with a max of around 50 miles in a week.
I have used this plan before and it has always treated me well.
The best part of the plan for me at this point is the drive to run 5 times a week – that has been a tough thing to do lately and I am hoping using a dedicated plan will help get that push back.
I am healthy, legs and ankles wise and I had no issues with old injuries (like my Achilles) coming back to haunt me – I have slain that bogeyman and I need to rebuild now.
So I will run 5 days a week, I will get in my long runs, and I will get better. It is going to be a long road to get back to where I was in 2014 and early 2015, but I will start by getting better than I am now. Need to get on the road somewhere and it is usually better to start at the start…
Next big thing is to get my weight down. I was down a bit for Dopey in January and was down even more when we got back to Winnipeg from our family vacation right after Dopey (how do you lose weight at Disney World? Walk…a lot)
But now my weight has come back up this week – from stress mostly I think. Our furnace crapped out (again – this time a control board ) and we were without our main source of heat for about 38 hours…in Winnipeg…in February…pretty stressful. We used a bunch of space heaters and I kept getting up to make sure the kids were warm enough and that we weren’t getting cold enough that the pipes might freeze. Luckily we had a warmer day in there so it wasn’t as scary as it could have been but it was stressful. Also we had a garage door spring break during the same period…so that was more money tossed.
So the stress and lack of sleep did a number on my body and my running this week but it will get better.
The plan at this point is to change up my diet again and get my weight down and mileage up. The hope is that I lose 1-2 pounds per week over the next 17 weeks leading up to the Manitoba Marathon. That should give me a good head start to really push through the summer months.
I also want to get my speed up again – I miss being able to do a sub 1:50 half marathon and would love to get back there again! With that in mind I am looking at potentially running the Winnipeg Police Service Half Marathon in May – I won’t be back to that level at that point but it is the race I got my 1:46 PR on and it is a good course to get me motivated to run quickly again.
That race usually sells out and I haven’t signed up for it yet – see furnace and garage door buggering up in one week… but I will train for it and if it works out I will run it but if it doesn’t, as long as the training is happening that is what is important at this point.
As part of my motivation plan I am going to be doing a weekly update (at a minimum) that I will put up on the blog but also up on YouTube – basically I have to keep myself honest and in the past, if I keep the blog up to date it makes me do that. I have been doing some video editing experimenting as a hobby, so I want to try some more YouTube videos as motivation as well.
For other plans – hoping the weather gets warmer soon so I can run outside more, run more with the dogs and practice with the gimbal while running. I love some of the video I got from the Dopey Challenge using the gimbal (which were my first runs with the toy) but it is obvious I need to get more experience using the tool and I have to get used to actually running with it (it messed up my form something fierce and I need to get used to it enough that more form is improved).
So that was a quick update for week 1 of 18 – stay tuned for more coming up this week!
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