Back to Reality

So after all the fun of Chicago, it's back to reality. I've decided that having met the big sub-3 goal, I am going to step away from marathon training for a while. There are a number of contributing factors here:

1. It's hard work running lots of miles every week, and I'm tired
2. I am old and creaky and things will break if I keep doing this
3. Next race was planned as Boston, in April, and it clashes with spring break so have decided to not screw up the family vacation plans for "yet another race"
4. I want to see if I can put in some decent times for shorter races

So the plan is to skip Boston, and do some short stuff. I am hoping that with the right focus and several attempts I can get my 5K, 10K and half marathon PRs down from where they are right now. I'm going to start by doing some 10Ks in November, and some 5Ks in December. There's a fast half on Superbowl day (Feb 7th) and finally Bay to Breakers (12K) in May.

So the training for now is going to be only 40-45 miles per week but with more focus on speed at the track. Since initially it's 10Ks I'll be doing longer distances like 1200s and 1600s. Then when I switch to 5Ks I'll do some shorter stuff 1000s, 800s and 400s. I'll still be doing tempo runs most weeks, but usually in the 4-5 mile range instead of the extended ones I have been doing. Long runs become much shorter, usually only around 10-12 miles.

To help with all of this fast stuff, I bought some very ugly fast shoes. Tried them out today with 4x400m at the track and they are super light and feel good.

I'll step the mileage up a bit in Jan as I start to gear up for the Kaiser half marathon. Not suer what I'll do between Feb and May, I guess it will depend on how things have gone.

Then after Bay to Breakers I'll come back to marathons with Berlin in September 2010, where hopefully my new found high end speed, and a solid training program will propel me to some great new time!