I've worked thru my goals for 2008, and as I promised yesterday in my 2007 recap I am publishing them for the world to see! I have picked out some key races, penciled in some others and built out the training plan (It's solid thru end of May and then kinda worked out thru the end of the year).
Overall Goals
All the boring, normal goals of staying healthy, listening to my body, stretching etc etc. but the fun stuff is when I get to my goals for race times.
The first incredibly-stretch goal is to run a sub 3 hour marathon, which if training goes well, I will attempt in Edinburgh. If that fails (which is very likely), I will wait until 2009 to retry, and instead focus the rest of 2008 on the other aggressive, but slightly more realistic, main goal. That goal is to go under 1:20 for a half marathon. That's a 10 minute reduction from where I am today. Along the way I will try to run the equivalent performances for 10k, 5k and 1 mile.
Marathon 2:59:59 (6:52 pace)
Half 1:19:59 (6:06 pace)
10k 35:39 (5:47 pace)
5k 17:15 (5:33 pace)
1 Mile 4:59
Races
I have picked out some races - Kaiser half marathon, Edinburgh marathon, San Jose Rock'n'Roll Half, CIM relay (half) - and have placeholders for other races. Here's how the times look if everything is converted to the equivalent half marathon times (I excluded the Edinburgh race)
Increased Fitness
Obviously to run faster, I need to get fitter. I'm using my average heartrate/average speed as a gauge of overall fitness. It's improved a lot over 2007 and here is what it needs to do thru 2008 if I am to hit the goal race times (my heartrate isn't going to change significantly, so this is easy to work out). It's not quite as a big a jump in 2008 as it was in 2007, which is good as life is not linear.
VDOT Analsyis
Another measure of racing ablity is to use Daniels' VDOT tables. Here's my current races, and my goal races converted to VDOTs and plotted. I need to improve in 2008 less than 2007. I think this improvement is just about doable as long as I don't get injured. A full year training at 60 miles per week should give me the improvements I need when you look at my 2007 mileage and the fact that I missed 4 months due to injury.
Mileage Goals
Planned mileage for 2008 is almost double the 2007 figure of 1,507 at just under 3,000 miles. That's running 343 days (I take a dayoff every cutback week, which is every 4-5 weeks). I doubt I'll hit the 343 days but barring injury, or a dramatic change of heart, I'll be in the vicinity of 3k for 2008. Here's a chart of monthly miles since I started running back in April of 2006.
Overall Goals
All the boring, normal goals of staying healthy, listening to my body, stretching etc etc. but the fun stuff is when I get to my goals for race times.
The first incredibly-stretch goal is to run a sub 3 hour marathon, which if training goes well, I will attempt in Edinburgh. If that fails (which is very likely), I will wait until 2009 to retry, and instead focus the rest of 2008 on the other aggressive, but slightly more realistic, main goal. That goal is to go under 1:20 for a half marathon. That's a 10 minute reduction from where I am today. Along the way I will try to run the equivalent performances for 10k, 5k and 1 mile.
Marathon 2:59:59 (6:52 pace)
Half 1:19:59 (6:06 pace)
10k 35:39 (5:47 pace)
5k 17:15 (5:33 pace)
1 Mile 4:59
Races
I have picked out some races - Kaiser half marathon, Edinburgh marathon, San Jose Rock'n'Roll Half, CIM relay (half) - and have placeholders for other races. Here's how the times look if everything is converted to the equivalent half marathon times (I excluded the Edinburgh race)
Increased Fitness
Obviously to run faster, I need to get fitter. I'm using my average heartrate/average speed as a gauge of overall fitness. It's improved a lot over 2007 and here is what it needs to do thru 2008 if I am to hit the goal race times (my heartrate isn't going to change significantly, so this is easy to work out). It's not quite as a big a jump in 2008 as it was in 2007, which is good as life is not linear.
VDOT Analsyis
Another measure of racing ablity is to use Daniels' VDOT tables. Here's my current races, and my goal races converted to VDOTs and plotted. I need to improve in 2008 less than 2007. I think this improvement is just about doable as long as I don't get injured. A full year training at 60 miles per week should give me the improvements I need when you look at my 2007 mileage and the fact that I missed 4 months due to injury.
Mileage Goals
Planned mileage for 2008 is almost double the 2007 figure of 1,507 at just under 3,000 miles. That's running 343 days (I take a dayoff every cutback week, which is every 4-5 weeks). I doubt I'll hit the 343 days but barring injury, or a dramatic change of heart, I'll be in the vicinity of 3k for 2008. Here's a chart of monthly miles since I started running back in April of 2006.
So I am hoping that 2008 is going to be a great running year for me and that I can achieve roughly inline with these plans. Of course, I'll adjust them as I go based on the harsh realities when each of these pretty little dots in excel is converted into a gut wrenching race....
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