Marathon Support. Running by time. Is it good?

I spent the weekend in Phoenix with Jen as she has been training to do the PF Chang's Marathon since September.  She was fully dedicated to her training schedule and followed it exactly.  A friend of mine provided a suite for us down there so she could relax.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect.  A few clouds in the morning to keep things cool, then sunny and warm at the finish.  Everything went according to plan and she beat her goal time by 7 minutes with no injuries, sickness, etc.  I am very proud of her, this is a major accomplishment.  Now she can start running again for fun.  Do people do that?

As for Joel and I.

Joel and I have been following the same training schedule since December now.  I am actually running by time on my feet, where Joel has been putting in miles.  I decided to go with time so that if I had a bad day it wouldn't matter if I got 5 miles in an hour or 7, but still got the hour in.

So far its been working out pretty good although I based the training on 10 min per mile pace which I would be a worse case scenario in training.

Through the first whole month of training I'm doing closer to 9 min per mile pace which leads to more miles over time spent.  Now I'm wondering if this is a good thing.  I've always had this persistent tightness in my right hamstring.  Maybe one of my legs is shorter than the other who knows.  But it seems to always get noticeable after about an hour.  Wonder how its going to feel after 4 hours everyday for 6 days.  Hmm...

Joel and I have been trying to run together 1 or 2 times a week which allows us to share how the training is going, what old man body parts are acting up, and life in general.  I've really been enjoying that time as it makes the run go by in no time at all.

P.S.  Ran this morning and actually had to take gloves and hat off, it was too warm.  Is it really still January?

Im seeing a Physical Therapist friend tomorrow to go over that nagging hammie.  Keeping my fingers crossed.

Increasing The Mileage....

January marks the first month of our slow increase in mileage. Our goal this month is just 30 miles per week. It's not a great challenge just yet, but I always find it difficult to squeeze miles in during winter. I'm only running 4 days a week at this point and the mild increase in mileage hasn't been too hard to maintain. I've tried to keep it slow most of the time and that has really made the running pretty enjoyable. Once the running club starts up again here soon, though, it may be tempting to slip in some speed work once a week.

Today Mark and I "ran" a 10k snowshoe race. I snowshoe quite a bit, but I've never tried to run much while doing it. It was a beautiful crisp sunny day for a run at the Flagstaff Nordic Center, but I hadn't anticipated how hard it would be. Foolishly, I thought we'd be running on the groomed trails. Instead, the hilly course followed a backcountry snowshoe trail. I brought my MSR Denali Hikers, but the good folks at Kahtoola let me demo their running snowshoes. They're nice and light, a bit smaller than my MSRs, and there was absolutely no movement of my running shoe in the snowshoe. Take a look at the Kahtoola RNR22 Snowshoe, they're pretty slick.

I learned today that a snowshoe run generally adds about 30% more effort than a typical run without snowshoes. However, the same individual estimated that today's snow conditions likely added roughly 40 to 50% more effort. It was a slog in somewhat unstable snow, roughly 2 feet deep. Our finish time was about twice what we normally finish on a 10k trail race. The race was a great workout by itself, but since I usually do my long runs on Sunday, I put in 5 miles just before it started. You'd think I'd regret that decision, and I probably should, but I got a lot of time on my feet today and I'm actually feeling pretty good.

-jea