I will be on vacation with my family from Jan 27th to Feb 9th with a goal of being 230 when I return and things have settled out.
Feb 11th = first training day to put in an 18 week training program for the Manitoba Marathon on June 16th. I will be using a modified version of the Hal Higdon Intermediate II program (http://halhigdon.com/training/51140/Marathon-Intermediate-2-Training-Program) – this is the same program modified by Lee Hoedl for the Goofy Race and Half Challenge that I followed for the Goofy. The plan worked well for me for the Goofy and should let me make some major improvements to my endurance and time for the Manitoba Marathon.
I am going to break the 18 week training program into 3 x 6 week periods to give me more flexibility in pushing my weight loss early and reducing it near the end to make sure I am properly fueled for the Manitoba Marathon.
First 6 weeks – Feb 11 to Mar 24 – I will modify the Hal Higdon plan so that there are no runs shorter than 6.6 miles – any that are longer than 6.6 will not be modified. The idea is that I want to push during this period to make sure I do these 6.6 runs in 1 hour or less so that 6.6 mph is my default slow speed (giving me a chance at a 4 hour marathon). This used to be my default speed back in the 2002 – 2006 period and I think it is achievable again. This period is also where I want to push my weight loss fairly hard as well – I would like to average 2 lb per week during this period. Starting weight = 230 and ending weight goal = 218
Second 6 weeks – Mar 15 to May 5 – depending on how I feel with the training I may now back off to exactly follow the Hal Higdon plan – if I don’t back off I will continue the plan from the first 6 weeks with a minimum run of 6.6 miles. The Winnipeg Police Services Half Marathon is on May 5th this year and I expect I will run it and shoot for a 2 hour or less time. The half marathon fits nicely with a 12 mile planned training run in the Hal Higdon plan for that Sunday. I intend to back of the weight loss goal a bit during this period as well – I hope to be doing some more resistance training and probably eating more protein to support that so I am hoping for continued weight loss counter balanced with some muscle gain. I hope to average 1.25 pounds a week during this period – starting weight goal = 218 and ending weight goal = 210.5.
Third 6 weeks – May 6th to June 16th – continue to follow Hal Higdon plan – I may continue with the minimum 6.6 mile runs but I don’t expect to as I don’t want to over train at this point. I should be doing a large number of my runs outside at this point. The Manitoba Marathon is on June 16th – there are a lot of time between now and then but I have seen the potential in my runs including how I felt on the Goofy Challenge runs to get back in the range of where I was in 2005 (4 hrs 15 min full). I am currently setting beating this as my goal with a small glimmer of hope for being under 4 hours. I don’t expect a huge amount of weight loss during this period as I should be fueling to run hard but I would still like to set a goal of 5.5 pound loss over the 6 weeks – Starting goal = 210.5 and ending goal – 205.
After that – part of me would like to be get under 200 pounds just to say that I have (it would be the first time since high school) but I have added significant muscle to my frame since high school and I don’t think I could get down that low without losing more muscle than I want to. If I look at my picture from the 2005 Manitoba Marathon I was in the vicinity of 215-220 at that point and I don’t see from that picture where an additional 20 pound weight loss would come from. So even my goal of 205 may not be realistic but I will stick with it for now with the understanding that it may have to be adjusted as my weight gets lower and start to see what will actually be possible.
After the Manitoba Marathon is done I will have to reassess where I am and what my goals are – ideally I would like to continue getting stronger and faster and then do Goofy again in 2014. This may not work however – My wife’s mother has expressed that she found it difficult to look after the kids for the period we were away and she doesn’t think she could do it again. It is another year away and the kids will be another year older so we may be able to change her mind but she can be relatively stubborn so I suspect not. I believe we will likely still do the Disney World Marathon Weekend but we would likely bring the kids and add a bit of a family vacation on the end of it. This would mean that most likely my wife would run the half on the Saturday while I look after the kids and then I would do the full on the Sunday. So I might not be able to be Goofy again next January – but that is almost a year away so we will have to wait and see what happens. But if I do the full and not both I would like to see if I can hit a new personal best on the run – those decisions will have to come later.
I may also look at the Treherne Marathon in September or possibly another fall or early winter run to make sure I stay in marathon form.
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