The mission should you choose to accept it....

is to run 3.29 in Dublin Marathon

Monday April 9^th-On Easter holidays. 29 weeks to Dublin. Seems like a very long build up but have decided to follow Pfitzinger’s 18week/ 70 mile plan. Will need 9-11 weeks to build base up to starting point of 45-51 miles. My goal is to achieve a sub 3.30 goal in Dublin marathon on 29^th October. A tough but a achievable task. This will be my 5^th marathon. I did Dublin 2010 in my target goal of a sub 4 (3.58.30). In retrospect I could have shaved 5 minutes of my time but I was very happy with my time. My second marathon was Cork in June 2011. I followed the same plan as before and aimed for a 3.50 but fell somewhat short at 3.53.04. I was happy in completing my second marathon in so far as I knew I could complete the distance,  running a max of 40 miles (20 and 22 mile runs) and doing no speedwork. I was disappointed in that I had no second gear just a ernest plod of 8.50 pace.

I knew I needed to work on different aspects of my marathon training and in the summer of 2011 purchased Pfitzinger’s Advanced Marathoning. The book arrived just before I started training for Dublin 2011 (marathon number 3). I wasn’t too sure about being able to do some of LT and VO2 max workouts partly out of fear and partly out of laziness. The schedules look intimidating first time out. I did however lock into the marathon pace running. That proved a massive boost to my running. In warm up races I hit 1.44 In Dingle half marathon (a 13 minute improvement), 1.39 in Charleville HM and a very satisfying 1.58 in 15 mile Cork to Cobh (the last 5 miles were at 7.30 pace). In Dublin i hit my best marathon time ever (3.40.51). The effort proved very taxing though and at miles 16 -18 and 23-25 I didn’t think I would make it. 6 weeks later with very little training I ran 1.41 in a very tough Clonakilty half marathon.

Next shot was Rome marathon on 18^th March 2012. Took it very easy in training building up base slowly. Whatever it was I didn’t have the heart to follow Pfitz’s book.In mind and body Dublin 2011 took a lot of me and I targeted Rome as a sub 4, certainly not a PB. My form in road races (belgooly 4, bandon 5 and most awful of all Dungarvan 10) wasn’t improving (none under sub 7 average) and the fog wasn’t lifting from my head. However in the last 7 weeks to the race  I hit a serious golden patch (3 weeks of 50 plus miles peaking at a 57 mile week- a record). In training i ran 20 miles in 2.45 and 23 miles in 3.10. I revised my target and decided to give the 3.30 a shot. In retrospect I knew this was daft as on the day a combination of factors killed me. There was stuff I had no control over (cobblestones and heat) but the stuff I had control over I didn’t do well at all (flat garmin, no hat, getting there late). This was my worse prepared race ever and my worse performance in terms of running (walking the last 3 K). I finished in 3.52.XX but should have had a 3.45.

Anyway have decided to follow Pfitz’s schedule as best as I can. I was also interested by Thomas Bubendorfer’s successful use of the book when getting a sub 3.30 in 2006 after falling short 4 other times. His blog and others are worth reading. If anything their race reports are well worth a read. Mine won’t be as dramatic.

April 10th

Base 11 I did 19.7 miles in a week. Took it very easy. Base 10 was 33 miles in that week. My long run was 11 miles in new route (Colmanswell). I was out of shape but was happy with getting the miles up on my legs. Base 9 did 3 miles in  town park on Monday.  On Tuesday I ran 2 laps of Doneraile park (10km) in a modest pace (8.31).  I am conscious of the need to explore new routes. I was stuck on the same old run in Charleville town and Mayfield so will run some routes around Fortlands, Bally hea, Doneraile park, Colmans well. Might even go up the ballyhoura mountains sometime.Also need to use my gym membership more- treadmill and pool useful for recovery runs and cross training.