In Kansas, if you want to run outside in the summer, you have to become a morning runner. So, that’s what I have done. Most mornings this week, I woke up before the sun and hit the road by 6:30am. Although I really have to nudge myself out the door, I generally run and feel better in the mornings.
This week was the 2nd of the Hanson’s Training Plan and the first full week of training. Most of the runs were easy with a track workout on Wednesday. So far, I feel great. I love the plan and the high mileage! I tend to do very well with low intensity but high mileage training plans. The track workout was a thrill, although I did take it a little too quick. I was having a rockin’ day, so I just went with it.
These are my paces:
Goal Marathon Time: 3:45
Goal MP: 8:35
Strength: 8:25
Speed: 7:33 – 7:52
Easy: 9:35 – 10:35
LSD: 9:05 – 10:35
I know that I am only in the second week of training, but that goal marathon time looks real scary. It is doable, but I am seriously going to have to work for it. Whatever… I’ll get used to looking at these times eventually.
This week’s training:
M: 6 miles easy pace
T: 6 miles easy pace
W: 1 mile WU – 12 x 400 – 1 mile CD (1:45, 1:52, 1:48, 1:47, 1:52, 1:47, 1:53, 1:47, 1:48, 1:28, 1:52, 1:50)
T: 6 miles easy pace
F: 8 miles easy pace
S: Rest!
S: 4.4 miles easy pace
Total: 38.4 miles
The highlight of this week was definitely the track workout. My paces were supposed to be 1:53 – 1:57, which I never actually hit. I was always well below that. However, I never felt like I was pushing it and I actually felt like I could have done a lot more after I was done. It’ll take time, but I’m sure I’ll start to get closer to my paces, especially with the cumulative fatigue. I gotta say though, that random lap at 1:28 was FUN! (side note: I used to sprint the 400 & 800 in high school, and I was very quick at it. I often feel like my body is more well-suited to sprints like that than long distance.)
On Sunday, I was supposed to go for 6, but instead cut it a little short. It was getting very dark out and I was feeling pretty crappy because of my allergies. Unfortunately, summer marks terrible allergy season for me here in Kansas, which can make running rather difficult.
Overall, it was a good and rather uneventful week, which is perfect for a first week of training. I am having some trouble getting myself out the door each morning. I think I’m still a little burnt out from Colfax. I’m sure that will subside, especially as I get a little closer to Chicago. Right now, it just seems so far off.
I didn’t take my camera with me on my runs this week, so I will leave you with a picture of my perfect cat, Elly.
How was your training? Who out there is running Chicago?
She Runs the Wasatch 
Killer 400s! You crushed it! Way to go, Keerrrrryyy!
Elly is just the sweetest little girl! Awww! Love her!
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I love 400’s! I have 600’s this week… talk about an awkward distance. I am not quite as excited for those. Honestly, I miss doing 200’s like I did in high school. Haha!
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Will you be moving the Wednesday rest day to Saturday for the entire training?
Way to have an awesome week!! I’m going to be stalking your blog for sure–same plan, same goal!! 😀
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Yeah. That schedule is what I will be using for the entire thing. Frank and I do too many trips on weekends for me to do my long stuff then. I figured I’d just get up early enough to have more than enough time to get to work.
What marathon are you running?
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She is perfect. 🙂 I want to eat her!! (And as you know that is a very high compliment for a kitty!!!)
I am going to have so much fun following you because you are like 4 weeks behind me so I am like I REMEMBER THAT WEEK! Question, are you always going to rearrange your workouts? I am just wondering cause my rest day is Wed in between the track and the tempo workouts.
Girl, I took my 400s way too fast too!!!!! Then everyone yelled at me to stick with the paces lol. When I did my 800s (week 3) I was sick and felt like a zombie, so it was easy to stick with the paces. Well, harder because I wanted to go SLOWER.
So I know I got a rip roaring case of PF over vacation (week 5) but it is gone now (yayyyy!) But I have to tell with with the first 4.5 weeks of hansons I did NOT feel like I was getting faster. I felt like I was getting slower. 😦 I could hit all my paces for speed and tempo, but the easy days I was just like captain sludge. But I guess that doesn’t matter as long as I can hit the paces where it counts????????? I am so excited to get back to running. I had to take some time off because I didn’t want the PF to be a THING. I wanted to nip it in the bud which was actually hard to do since we were hiking our asses off in RMNP. But it has finally been under control for the past 4 days so I am ready to train again. I can’t wait. But I am sad I missed some workouts! It has been so long since I have been on my neighborhood running route that when I was doing an easy 6 miler this weekend I noticed they repainted the lines on the road. LOL!!!
Sorry to hijack with such a long comment. 🙂
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Yeah, my slow runs are really really slow. I feel like it’s actually kind of ridiculous how slow I am taking them, given that my goal MP is almost 2 minutes faster. I mean… I guess trust the plan, but I am not totally sold that this is going to work. I do really well on high mileage, but I tend to keep the intensity considerably up higher than what it is in the Hanson’s plan. That being said…I just bombed a tempo run. It was 97 degrees outside and I just couldn’t finish. I was surprised I kept it up as long as I did.
Elly is perfect…until about 4:00 am, when she decides she is hungry and that I must wake up to feed her. Then, she is kind of the worst.
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Okay well 97 degrees I am not sure Hansons expects us to be able to nail a tempo run in that kind of weather! I say give yourself a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge as you know who would say!) break on that one!!!!
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Omg I just left a super long comment! Where is it???
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Haha!
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There it is 🙂
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This string of comments is kind of hilarious.
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I’m really interested in your training. We have similar time goals for our upcoming fall marathon (mine is Steamtown), but I’m using Run Less, Run Faster, which is philosophically the opposite end of Hanson’s. It’ll be fun to see how our training goes.
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Awesome job on those 400s! The 12×400 has been my least favorite workout of the whole plan. While it’s the same amount of speed work as the other workouts, I always felt like, why do I have to do 12 of them??? But it’s never as bad as I think it will be!
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I did some hill repeats today. Everything was going pretty well until the last half mile and I just felt like I ran out of steam — and it was only a 3 1/2 mile run! Ah well, early days.
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Solid week, I think time pacing is always scary when you first look at it, you will get comfortable with those paces in no time.
Great track work, I did them lAst week and felt like I was going to die after 4 lol
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I love reading about other people’s training plans. So interesting to see how different everyone is when it comes to what works and what doesn’t. Good luck in Chicago! I’m trying a new plan for a local October marathon and excited!!
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