Why am I blathering on about this? Well, I want to set myself the rather lofty goal of setting a London Marathon Good for Age (GFA) qualifying time in my next marathon in the Spring. For me, this means 3 hours 45 minutes. If you plug some of my recent race times into race calculators, the 5k says a 3:35 (BQ) time is achievable, and the 10k says 3:45 is achievable, though only just, at the moment. I shall be doing a 10k and half marathon next month which will hopefully help to cement the possibility in my mind of being able to achieve that GFA time.
I'm lucky in that after 22nd September, I have no more races in the pipeline to get in the way of this goal, so I can knuckle down to training, and here is where the dilemma lies. I have 3 potential training plans. One by Jeff Galloway which is in his how to qualify for Boston book. It follows a 29 week build up and so I would have to start following it at the end of September. One is the much revered Pfizinger and Douglas plan from their book Advanced Marathoning, however, each time I've studied the plan I've had reservations about how I would fit in the mid-week sessions. The third is to follow a Hal Higdon plan- I followed his intermediate plan for my last marathon and it did me well- perhaps this time I would step up to intermediate 2. At the moment I'm leaning toward starting the Jeff Galloway plan in September, and then switching to the Hal Higdon plan when there are 18 weeks to go, but still keeping some of the more technical aspects of Jeff's plan, like the cadence drills, acceleration gliders and magic mile time trials.
Anyone have any thoughts? Other than the one about me being crazy?
Personally I'm a massive fan of the P&D plan and it seems to be serving me well in the build up to my first marathon. But you'd be much better off choosing a plan that you know you can stick to from day one. It's a horrible feeling to miss important sessions so if you struggle for time during the week then I'd advise against P&D. Your plan to combine Hal Higdon and Jeff Galloway sounds like a good one to me.
ReplyDeleteThanks tiny runner- I've been reading your blog and can see P&D is working out very well for you. I would like to try that plan one day as the theory makes sense to me, but I'm certainly finding more miles at whatever pace is generally bringing improvement. My max mid week is really only 8 miles, and I have to meticulously plan my day and my entire week to fit that in unfortunately, so P&D is no go for me unless I change something major in my life.
DeleteI've used P&D twice and didn't really get on well with it. I'm not a naturally 'fast' runner but having run 2-4 marathons a year for the last 5 years I've got plenty of endurance! For me, P&D was too focussed on endurance and I didn't improve at all both times I used it. That's not to say it doesn't work, just that it didn't work for me.
ReplyDeleteI've never followed Hal Higdon but I've read the book (a few times over!) and the plans look good, a few speed sessions a week, shorter runs on weekdays with the longer sessions on a weekend. If you're stuck for time on weekdays, or if you're like me in that you need plenty of faster sessions, I'd go for Hal Higdon :)
Thanks lass, I think I'm a bit different, I seem to be able to find a lot of speed for a 5k, but it significantly drops off when racing higher distances. I think perhaps I fear hitting the wall so much that maybe I race well within myself now for half and full marathons. I'm definitely vry much still learning when it comes to the marathon though. I think if I can maintain current fitness with some speed over the next few months, I should be able to go into a Hal higdon plan in December for a spring marathon at a faster pace. At the moment I'm doing easy runs at the pace I did my spring marathon this year, so that shows a lot of improvement, but that could also be I'm less tired from the lower training volume... Do u have a blog- I can't find it??
DeleteWow you really have improved, it's such a confidence boost when you realise that your easy runs are your old race pace! The lower mileage will help but not to the extent that race pace is now easy. You're just getting faster :)
DeleteNo I don't have a blog, I've always meant to start one but probably wouldn't keep it up to date!
Shame u don't have a blog :-(. 2-4 marathons a year? Which have u done this year? Which are in the pipeline? I kinda want to work toward the 100 marathon club once I've cracked the Boston qualifier!
ReplyDeleteI've only done one marathon this year so far! That was London. Amsterdam is next! I once had a thought of trying to do 100 but four in one year was enough to mash my poor legs! I enjoy the training for them so don't mind just doing one spring and one autumn.
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