I’m training for a new race, so I’m bringing back the weekly training update. It’s a good excuse to reflect on my running each week and keep tabs on my progress. It’s also a great forum for low-stakes writing – I’ve got an ambitious word count goal this year (150,000) and my newsletter isn’t going to get me there by itself.
Another goal of mine this year is a sub-3 hour marathon, and that’s what I’ll be progressing towards in my training. It’s highly ambitious, given my fastest marathon was a 3:21 and I have hit zero of the suggested milestones on shorter races:
- 1:25 half marathon (1:30 best time)
- 38 minute 10K (41 minute best time)
That’s not to say it’s impossible, but to give an idea of where I’m starting from. I definitely have substantial work to do.
I plan to run the “big” marathon in the fall, and am training for the Brooklyn Marathon in April to get a sense of what I can do without any speed workouts. Those will come later this summer, and will hopefully help close the gap between whatever I do in April and breaking three hours in October/November. I’m still debating which race I’ll run, but am leaning towards the Philadelphia Marathon on November 20th.
As always, it’s felt great to build back up the mileage and fall back into the routine of weekly long runs. I’m halfway done my current training plan, and wrapped up this week with an 18-mile run around the lower half of Manhattan. It had been a while since I’d run on the East River, and it felt great to be back. I also found this beautiful mural in Chinatown, which made for the perfect run photo in MapMyRun:
Below is a snapshot of my weekly mileage. Since I started off at a decent level of fitness, I decided to skip a couple of weeks early on. I’ve also been flexible with my weekday runs, choosing to shift my Wednesday longish run to Friday so I can run it with a friend. I’ve also substituted rest days for workouts on the indoor rower as much as possible. They’re low impact and keep the rest of my body strong, but it’s too early to tell whether it’s the right move.
More to come!