2009 Season schedule

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that 2009 would be the year of the bike. I looks like I lied. I meant it at the time but it just happened that I unexpectedly qualified for the Boston Marathon and have to start marathon training all over again. This time, I want to put in more miles than for my first marathon. Although the training was more than sufficient and the race went smoothly, after the race my body was thorougly thrashed. A week after the race, I went out for a short run and basically couldn't walk straight the next couple of days. I believe that with more volume, I will be able to recover faster. So if I race 5 or 6 times a week, I won't be able to bike as much as I had hoped.

So what's the plan?  Originally, I had thought I would go to the Florida 70.3 Ironman at Disneyworld but now that I have to go to Boston (and my family discovered a sudden interest in my running), this would blow my travel budget. So I will do my 70.3 races locally. I still wanted to do something new in the Spring. Last years I did the Sulphur Springs 25k trail race and they also have longer distances, so I decided to go for the 50 mile this year. Boston will be a training runabout 5 weeks before Sulphur Springs.

I'm going to build a plan from a combination of the "level 2" marathon plan from "Brain Training for Runners" (BTFR) and the Comrade Marathon plan from "Everyone's Guide to Distance Running" (EGDR). The Comrade Marathon is a well known 90km ultra-marathon down in South Africa. So I'm going to follow the BTFR plan to build the pre-requisite base mileage of about 70 km/week and switch to the EGDR plan. The mileage for some of the long runs is just ridiculous, so the author recommends doing half-marathons, marathons or short ultras (50k) at a slow pace as training runs.

I have already started the first (BTFR) plan. I will keep going until February 8, which is 16 weeks before Sulphur Springs and then switch over to EGDR until May 23rd 2009.

My Race schedule should look like this:

Nov 23 - Whitby Waterfront 10k

Dec 28 - Resolution Run 5k

Jan 1st - Hair of the dog 9k

Mar 7 - Seneca Creek 50k

Mar 29 - Around the Bay Road Race (30k)

April 20 - Boston Marathon 42.2k

May 23 - Sulphur Springs 50 miles (80k)

I might no do all of them. Some distance don't quite mesh with the plan. For example, in therory I should "warm up" with a 14k run before the Boston marathon to get my mileage up to 56 km that day. We'll see. All of those run are to be done at a slower "ultra" pace of about 5:40min/km (9:07/mile). I will also switch to a run/walk combination of 8 km run / 3 minutes walk. 

I am a bit concerned about speed. Ever since I've started marathon training, I feel like my speed has stagnated. We'll see what happens in Whitby. I haven't run a 10k race since April except in Olympic triathlons and that does NOT feel the same. I'll make my best efforts to work hard in my speed workouts.

Of course, I'll still try to put in a couple of bike and swim sessions every week. Once Sulphur Spring is done, I will switch to triathlon training. My planned races are:

July 5 - Peterborough half 

July 18 - Triathlon Saguenay Sprint (against my homies)

August 21- Timberman 70.3

I'll do a few extra Sprints and/or Olympics depending on my schedule.