sunday, january 31, 2010
Training Conference
After battling the hip pain for at least six weeks I finally just decided to throw in the towel. It didn't make any sense at all to keep pounding away at this, enduring this much pain for no real goal whatsoever.As a result I didn't run at all for three weeks and let myself recover from whatever the hell I had messed up. To compensate somewhat, I hauled out the thrice damned roman chair a week ago and started hitting it every other day.
I talked with Coach Dean this morning and we decided to just go back to speed strength and start pretty much from scratch. Hopefully, since I just took three weeks off instead of the usual three months, it won't be completely from scratch.
Goalwise we have decided on the Portland Marathon scheduled for October 10. The idea being this. For the next six to eight weeks I'll work exclusively on building strength (at the expense of any sort of distance at all) and, after that, we'll have a sense of where I am physically. That will put us at the end of March.
To run Portland I'll have to start formal training sometime in early July. So between April and June I'll begin ramping up my distance efforts incrementally and try to gauge where I am physically. The idea is that by going slower and more methodically through this phase I'll be less likely to come down with some sort of nagging injury that pops up when I get into that 35-miles-per-week range.
If, come July, I'm behind schedule we'll have the opportunity to target a marathon later in the year. In fact, there's pretty much a four-month window between Portland and the Arizona Marathon in February 2011 to choose from. Thus we can account for breaks in training due to work, injury or whatever.
So, for now, I am back on the speed strength train. Racing of any type is out of the question until April at the earliest. I'm also going to refocus on core training for two very key reasons. The first is to augment my overall strength for running and, possibly more importantly, to keep a consistent aspect of training from here on out.
Too often when I've had to curtail runs due to whatever reason I've become lax in my training focus. This will give me something every week to keep me on target even if I'm not lacing up the shoes for some given reason.
So that's the plan. I'll post an update when we get to gang aft agly.
more: Core Training | Observations | Training Schedules
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