Hind sight is 20/20
The rule of thumb is to not increase your weekly mileage by more than 10% (although alot of training plans routinely go over it but back off just prior or just after). I went back to my training (b)log and looked at my mileage. Egads!
Basically, the first week I ran 6 miles (with no prior running base to speak of), then the second week I ran a whopping 10.7 miles! That’s a 78% increase! Then (as if that wasn’t enough), I launched straight into Higdon’s Novice schedule. No wonder my shins hurt. Its a very gentle ramp up, but the damage had already been done and the schedule assumes you aren’t injured going in.
Isn’t it wierd how obvious it is now? I think at the time I was simply looking at my maximum distance in one run so that I could do the 3 mile runs in Week 12 of the plan.
I’m not sure how I would do it over. More time before training. I had wanted to be in the Martian Marathon because it looked cool and was close to home, so I pushed the timing.
So, do we learn from our mistakes? I think so. Maybe. I hope so.
I set up my post-marathon recovery training and then made sure that it meshed well with the 18 week marathon schedule for Chicago. I have a very gradual mileage increase, particularly the first 4 weeks. I’m following Higdon’s post marathon plan but the mileage is cut waaaay back since it should really be a post-half-marathon plan. Basically, I’ll be taking 10 weeks to do what I did in 3 weeks preparing for the half.
Several of the weeks are over 10% increases, but its hard to go from 6 to 6.6 miles. So I jump from 5 to 6 miles, or 6 to 7 miles but then I simply repeat weeks at 6 and 7 miles so that I have recovery time at the increased distance.
I need to find a way to put in an image, or a table or something. Let’s see…
Week……..mileage
0………………5
1………………6
2………………6
3………………7
4………………7
5………………8
6………………9
7………………10
8………………9
9………………12
—————-
18………………13
17……………..16
16………………15
15………………19
14………………21
13………………18
12………………24
11………………25
10………………24
9………………29
8………………32
7………………29
6………………36
5………………33
4………………30
3………………29
2………………21
1………………35.2 (ok, this last one looks silly because it includes 26.2)
Ok, that’s really dreadful but its the best I can do. Weeks 0-9 are recovery and then marathon training starts counting down from 18. I pretty much created 0-9, but I’ll be following Higdon’s descriptions about how to do it. Walking. Resting. Going very easy.
The tough transition is near week 18. I had dropped back the mileage at week 8 (recovery). Then there’s a big increase at week 9 (33%). So, I changed the mileage for week 18 to only 13 miles. It keeps me from jumping up the mileage too fast after the previous week’s jump.
So, according to Higdon, today’s workout is….REST! And tomorrow’s workout is REST! I like this so far :)
