Bill's 20/20 Lifestyle Program

I will not be running in the Resolution Run after all. Instead, I'm going to take Nathan snowboarding. I may or may not ski myself, although I did buy some ski boots last week (Head S9 Heatfit). I got them from the Alpine Hut in Seattle (www.alpinehut.com). These guys don't sell the really cheap stuff, but they do guarantee that they will make your boots fit no matter how much work they have to put into them. Given that I'm going to have these things for years, I think it's worth it to pay an extra $100 now for that peace of mind.

Well, I finished my second week of marathon training, even with Christmas during the week. I did three 3-milers during the week. Then this weekend, I planned to do a 7-miler on Saturday, but had to cut it short because I needed to get home to take Nathan to guitar practice. Instead of the planned 7 mile run, I did a 3.5 mile run. To get things back on track, I ran my 7-miler today. This was 3.5 miles more than I should have run this week, but it's more important that get in my long runs than I slowly put on mileage. Also, since I had been doing 20 mile weeks recently, I felt that it wouldn't be a problem to run 4.5 miles more than the previous week.

My pace is still slow, about 10:15 per mile. I put some extra weight on over the holidays, so that is probably part of it. I am also not too concerned about speed, so the fact that I'm running slow is not critical, as long as I can run long.

Next week I back off on my long run (only 5 miles), but add a mile to my mid-week run. I will do 3, 4, 3, and 5 for a total of 15 miles. This is part of the Hal Higdon program: 2 weeks of increasing mileage followed by a back off week. Following next week's back off week, I will do 19 miles, including a 9 mile long run.

I'm pretty pleased with how things are going so far. I just home I can keep it up!

My general training schedule (from www.halhigdon.com) is:

Monday: Rest Day
Tuesday: Short Run (3-4 miles)
Wednesday: Medium/Long Run (starting at 3 miles and progressing to 10 miles)
Thursday: Short Run (3-4 miles)
Friday: Rest Day
Saturday: Long Run (starting at 6 miles and progressing to 20 miles)
Sunday: Cross Training (non-running cardio)

I may modify this plan a bit by swapping Wednesday's and Thursday's runs (Wednesday is not a good day for a 10 miler). In addition, I will be skiing for a number of Saturdays in January and February, and on those days I will call that cross training and do my long run on Sunday.

I think I'm going to run the 2007 Resolution Run on January 1st at Sand Point Park in Seattle. This is a very flat 5K race. I won't be PRing on this one, but I think it will count nicely toward my marathon training.

As I've said before, I have to have something to train for in order to stay on track. I've therefore chosen to train for the Spirit of St. Louis Marathon on April 15th, 2007. This allows me to immediately slip into an 18 week training program that started a week after the LV Half. No breaks means no backsliding.

I am setting my sights on doing the full marathon. I always wanted to do one, and this one is as good as any. Obviously, its a long way away and I could ratchet back to the half (or even not doing the race at all), but for now I'm going to be training as if I'm doing the 26.2 race.

I started the Hal Higdon Novice Marathon training plan last week with 15 miles of running. This week I move up to 16 miles. Hal's novice program peaks at 20 miles in week 15.

Anyway, I'm on track to complete a full marathon on tax day of 2007. Keep your eyes on this blog to get details of my training and (hopefully) results of the race.

Well, I had several issues that impacted me during the final weeks of preparation for the half marathon. I was sick for two solid weeks, and although I was able to do shorter runs during that time, my long runs we definitely impacted. My final long run was only 4 miles (!). In addition, Seattle had a major snow storm that basically meant we couldn't leave the house for about 3 days.

Anyway, I was concerned when I did the half that I might not even be able to finish it. My longest long run during training for this race was only 8 miles. However, it was an easy course and I finished in 2:20:32. This does not count a 2 minute potty break I took where I turned my watch off. It turns out that this is about 20 seconds better than my first half, so I got a new PR! :-)

As far as the race itself went, it was not that fantastic, although it was cool to run with so many thousand runners (about 15,500). It was also cool to have a big crowd cheering us on (although it would have been nice if they were there at the end of the race rather than the beginning. Being in Vegas was fun, and I had a good time with Mark Dinman and the other Asynchrony guys, as well as Mark's buddy, Mike Fitzgerald from New York.

Mark seems to think that this will be an annual event for all of us. I'm not sure if I'll do it every year, but it was definitely fun this time.