It's All A Matter Of Perspective

Today I dove right in to the "time goal" marathon training plan by Jeff Galloway, in spite of the fact that I am technically behind schedule and technically undertrained. I thought I'd give it my best effort and see what happened. While I was out there, I had so many thoughts that I'd like to share.

Before I even got out there, though, I wasn't sure the run would happen. We've had tornadoes around here for 24+ hours, but thankfully we are unharmed. The weather forecast called for 70% chance of rain or higher ALL day. I knew I had to at least try to get out there, so I did. And would you believe it didn't rain one drop?

I went through my entire training season with Team Point Two last year absolutely AMAZED that I did not get injured. After all, I was extremely out of shape (coming back from pregnancy, I mean) and was 25 pounds heavier than I was pre-pregnancy. Training six days per week, well... I just didn't think I'd make it uninjured. Today it hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though the training was indeed rigorous and often, John frequently had me doing the Galloway-style walk-run miles. That surely helped! Now it is crystal clear.

The Galloway method promises, as I have mentioned before, less days spent on the road and fewer chance of injury. That kind of makes sense, if you ask me. Duh! I believe the reason that the training schedule is, technically, about 27 weeks long is because he does alternate between long runs and speedwork on the weekends. So not only do I get to rest the day before AND after a long run, I also get -- technically -- two weeks off before the next one comes around. I am loving it already!

Back to today's run. Even though my highest mileage recently is *gulp* 4 miles, I thought I'd see how many of the 11 prescribed miles I could do without feeling like death. I followed the rule about adding 2 minutes per mile to you goal pace. That meant that often my running stints were done at 13-14 minutes per mile. This "recover quicker and get fewer injuries" business is starting to make sense!

I was fairly consistent out there. The final mile turned into a family affair (at my plea) so it was slower. Here are the splits:
14:08
14:03
13:56
14:11
14:15
14:28
14:03
14:00
14:38
14:37
17:11
Average: 14:31

Jeff Galloway also says to add additional time to each mile when the temperature is over 60 degrees. At that rate I'll never get to speed up, since today was close to 80 degrees and extremely humid considering all of the rain we've had. Oh well - hopefully Chicago, which is 23 weeks from now, will be cooler. Out there today I kinda-sorta decided that my goal for Chicago is to run the race and NOT feel like death after mile 20 -- which good ole Jeff says I can do. Here's hoping!