Thursday, January 22, 2015

I declare THIS to be: Day 1 of Boston Training

Before I start yakking along about my Boston training thoughts, it merits mention that I'm playing a famous person this week! (more on this later... I promise.)

That's ME!!! Holy shit you guys, I'm *famous*!

Here is the whole article.
Anyways.. Back to reality!
Boston is on the minds of most marathoners at this point, myself included. Yes, even me. I keep getting those emails from the BAA reminding me not to be a slack off *sigh*!

As I'm gearing up for the season, looking at my first "race" this Sunday and starting to carve out time for long runs people ask me "when do you officially start Training?" (which makes me weep and gnash my teeth! is my current training plan not enough!!!! why do you people want more!!?? hahaha I'm kidding, that actually never crossed my mind until this second.)

We all know that my marathon training plan last season, from July to October was done in the most creative manner possible and, thankfully, with reasonably good results. What I took away from that training cycle was this.  While I can have marathon success with a very minimalistic schedule, and come away uninjured and happy with the outcome I'd like a slightly more structured plan leading up to Boston.

Why?
-Well, because I have a modicum more time.
-Because Boston is a very sneaky, tricky, rotten little course (we are fighting.)
-Because when my schedule allows, I actually enjoy a training regimen.

Although the winter season can be challenging with storms of snow, shit and chaos I still find it easier to fit in a decent number of workout hours than in the summer. When I'm literally working my ass off every minute of the day chasing around lazy brown ponies (good exercise.)

The itty bitty snowbank from our latest teeny shit storm. Yeah, I like to jump off stuff.
The thing is, all running that I do is training me for Boston. (or the winter season. or for whatever next Spring might bring!)
While I'm not trying to be a vague pain in the ass I have trouble defining when Boston training will start, or did start.
It's similar to asking me when I am going to start prepping horses for the 2015 competition season, Basically, everything I do gets them ready for this season and beyond. At the same time, I vary the levels of intensity in my training seasonally because horses can not peak all the time. I'm not riding "show prep" right now because with months to go, we are building not peaking.

I find that I feel the same way- I spend a good amount of time building and prepping the legs but am careful not to go hard every week, or race too much, or do the same thing daily causing burnout, fury and angst. I'm also not a fan of the 18 week training plan (because, seriously? that's a crap ton of weeks.)

I sound like a politician here don't I, evading the whole blog topic!!

So to answer the question I have spent this week getting organized, planning what weekends are going to have long runs, when I want to have peak mileage weeks, and when I want to be lazy.
So NOW! It starts now. We can just make this the official date for the sake of having fun. It's roughly 12 weeks until race day which gives me a boat load of time, a few weeks to get it together, a week or two to goof off and ample time to decide that I have too much/not enough time to get ready. Boom. Done sucka's.

My honest feeling is that as long as I have been running like a normal person, targeting some long run and some speedwork that I'll be just fine.

(that zen like attitude will not stop me from moaning and whining a little bit during my high intensity weeks but whatever, overall "you are fine, chill out" is my motto, per the norm!)


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5 comments:

  1. Awesome. I love that you can train however you want and still rock at such a hard race. You are pretty much like a dude ;P (my brother "trained" for 2 weeks and smoked me, who trained for 3 months...nice). Good luck! And that's pretty cool how famous you are now, great pictures in the article.

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    1. Haha I totally know what you mean about *dude* training! I'm not quite that naturally gifted, I'm afraid :-) Thanks for the nice compliments on the article!!

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  2. How about a Boston Marathon/Devon Horse Show double in 2015? You have almost six weeks between those events. :-)

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    1. things would be even easier for me since Devon doesn't do their Dressage show until late September! Score! ;-) Late in 2013 I ran a PR marathon and then 4 days later took two horses to Mystic for a show. That was not a double for the faint of heart! Ouch....

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  3. Congrats on the 1st Day!!! Its the 26th now & just checking in. Hope you are well, happy, & stronger. Cheers

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