Tuesday 4 March 2008

Week 8, Day 1: Breaking in

After far too long lazing about, I got back on the road this morning. I was also breaking in my new shoes, which I bought in the interest of alternating to give my feet/legs a breather, reducing the incidence of blisters, and making my shoes last a bit longer. I set out for the Islington 4-mile course I usually use, but you may recall I haven't actually run this course properly in quite some time. I actually forgot that I had done it for 4 miles before, and so I'd had the park in my head as a turn-around point, but when I got there, I was only at 1.6 so very clearly not to halfway. I carried on, winding my way through Hackney (my favourite borough!) without managing to get lost though at some point I stopped to look at the map and pushed what I thought was "stop" on the Garmin and it said "timer started" so somewhere in there I'd run for a while without either timing or following myself along. I'll try to recreate the lost miles somewhere and add my true total distance and route but in the meantime I'll just go with the reported time and distance. 4.2 miles, 47:32. But then I finished well over 4 miles and was still most of a mile from home, and in the interest of not overdoing it today and needing to rest/recover too much the rest of the week considering I'm 8 weeks out and took most of a week off, I decided to just walk home.

Which brings me to a thought on the training plan I'm using. It's a nice gradual increase, and considering it's designed to take you from barely able to run 3 miles to a marathon in 16 weeks, I see the wisdom of the approach, but there are NO CUTBACK WEEKS. I don't think I need it physically - the mileage is pretty low, overall - but the mental break is nice too and I think that's why I took last week off - because there wasn't a prescribed method for kicking back a bit. Lesson for next marathon.

2 comments:

Bill Carter said...

Hi Megan

It is very easy to get burned out when you are trying to build up mileage or train for a race. I think there should certainly be rest weeks along with rest days built into any schedule. I know I am guilty of a little overtraining, but I am obviously obsessed with running and can't be held responsible. I will admit to being jealous of all the really cool places you get to run. In Michigan right now, I could either run outside in the snow and ice and probably kill myself of stick to the hamster wheel... which I can only do for so much longer!

Take that cutback week and it will certainly help you.

Nancy said...

Hope your rest serves it's purpose. My plan didn't have any cutbacks either. By 14 I was toast.

Bill's right, he can't be held responsible. :D