Thoughts on This Training Cycle: 11.5 Weeks In
Hey guys, happy Wednesday! My morning was a little more eventful than planned – I woke up 1.5 hours after my alarm was supposed to go off and 15 minutes after I was supposed to be at work. I flew out of bed and was running around like crazy trying to get out the door when I texted my boss and told him I’d be there ASAP. He responded to not rush as practice would mostly be over by the time that I arrived and to just shift my hours and stay around for our weights practice at 5pm (I don’t usually stay for that practice since daycare hours end at 5:30). So instead of sitting in the morning traffic to make it to work and miss practice anyways I headed out the door to do my workout in the park near our house. I had really been looking to get this done on the track since my 10K on Saturday is a track race but I had to make do with the circumstances.
The goal was 6x 1km @ 3:25 w. 3 minutes rest + 2x 400m fast w/ 90 seconds rest.
My actual splits ended up being 3:27 / 3:25 / 3:13 / 3:25 / 3:18 / 3:23 + 74 / 74
On my cool-down this morning I was thinking about how much different my workouts and training this winter/spring have been from my marathon build up last fall and I realized I hadn’t really mentioned why on here. I thought it was especially important to make note of since I am racing a marathon in 14.5 weeks and you might think “why not do exactly the same thing as before since it seemed to work so well?”.
So a quick reason for the difference – my build up to CIM was very marathon focused, my one and only goal during last fall was to train for and run an Olympic Trials Qualifying time. And even though I am going to be running a marathon in June my coach and I have chosen to set our focus on shorter distances for this training cycle. I have 4 main goals for this “season” and they don’t necessarily include running a marathon PR.
These goals are…
- Run a 5K PR (currently 16:50 from my junior year of college)
- Run a 10K PR (currently 36:04 from last July)
- Compete in my first USA Championship race – happening at the USA Half Marathon Champs on May 6th
- Get a second solid, elite-marathon racing experience under my belt.
It is definitely a little unconventional to be training mostly for the 5K/10K 15 weeks out from a marathon which is why I had to choose what’s more important to me in this season – running a marathon PR or a 5K PR. Ultimately I chose the 5K-half as my focus because the training is just soooo different from what I was doing leading up to CIM and I needed a change from the marathon grind. Switching it up has been so good for me both mentally and physically – my speed workouts have brought a new challenge and I’m strength training much more than I was in my CIM build up. In the long run this is all going to make me a much stronger runner at the marathon distance and by getting faster in the shorter distances marathon pace is going to feel easier.
Why even run a marathon if I want to focus on the shorter distances in this season? The main reason is because my long term sights are set on the 2020 Olympic Marathon Trials. I don’t just want to show up there and run, I want to get there and RACE! I’ve run 4 marathons so far but really CIM is the only high quality, marathon-racing experience that I have under my belt. Even if I don’t run at PR at Grandma’s I will likely be able to be competitive within the field and that experience is going to be invaluable to me 2 years down the road. I don’t like to do more than 1 or 2 marathons a year so I have to take advantage of these opportunities when I can – especially if Henri and I are going to attempt to grow our family before the 2020 Trials.
Much like in motherhood, you can’t do it all with your running… at least not all at the same time. I’ve accepted the fact that my time at Grandma’s might not be as good as it could be if I focused solely on training for that race but I’m looking forward to the learning experience that it will provide. It will definitely help me grow as a marathoner and in the meantime I’m soaking up the new challenges that the shorter distance training keeps throwing my way.
I’m loving the change in pace, workout types, soreness levels, etc. I think I was truly built for the 5K-10K which will make Henri laugh because he’s been trying to remind/convince me of that for years. I’m just going to soak up this training cycle as much as I can because who knows when I’ll get to train like this again after June… it’ll likely either be all about the marathon or baby growing time. 🙂
What are you training for right now?
What is your favorite distance to race?