Week 1 – Training for Boston

Well the Boston Marathon is less than 16 weeks away and I am back into some serious running. Following my last marathon in Cologne Germany I’ve ran fairly regularly but not on a specific routine so time for serious training and adhering to a schedule. I use Smart Coach from Runner’s World Magazine to provide the basics for my schedule and tweak it accordingly. They have a new iPhone app that makes it convenient to always have my schedule handy. I’m going to be running 5-6 days per week. The plan calls for 6 days but I’ll substitute one of those days for cross training if my legs are fatigued. My running week will generally be Tuesday through Sunday. I only ran 5 days in the first week, partly to ease into things but also we were traveling and on flight days it was tough to get the run in.

Monday – December 27, 2010 – 11.5 long run
Tuesday – December 28, 2010 – Rest
Wednesday – December 29, 2010 – 7.02 speed work
Thursday – December 30, 2010 – 6.09 easy
Friday – December 31, 2010 – 3.34 easy
Saturday – January 1, 2011 – Rest
Sunday – January 2, 2011 – 14.5 long run

Weekly total: 42.45 miles
Cumulative total: 42.45

It feels good to be back on a schedule. I have a tendency to let my weight take an upward trend in between marathons so I’ll be glad to drop several extra lbs! It’s a challenging time of year to train both due to the weather and the short days. The current sunrise is 7:57 a.m. and the sunsets at 4:32 p.m. and since I pretty much work 8-5 I do a lot of running in the dark. I have to get up at 4:48 a.m. to catch the 5:15 a.m. bus to downtown Seattle. That gives me enough time to get to the office, get a few things done and be on the running trail by 6:00 a.m. The good news is that the days are already getting longer. I just looked it up and by January 11th there will already be 1 minute and 42 seconds more day light than there is today!

Happy trails –
Jim


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