Reader Question – “be brutally honest!”
| March 6, 2018 | Posted by Melinda under Uncategorized |
So my friend wants me to run a 1/2 marathon with her in 7 months…the farther I’ve ever run was 7.5 miles like ohhhh 10 years ago, and I’m not running at all at present. In your opinion as a runner, is this doable or a really bad idea?? Feel free to be brutally honest! 
This question came from Kristina M.and of COURSE I will endorse all hair-brained schemes to do crazy things.
Or as I told/asked my PT (Physical therapist), “I did 1 1/2 hours pain free last week so the schedule is 2 hours this week, 3 hours next week, and a 20 mile ‘easy’ run at the end of the month!”.
He looks skeptical and says it will be a good “experiment”.
Doing a 1/2 marathon in 7 months is perfectly reasonable. Planning this race distance is a smaller version of what I do every time I decide I want to do a race.
First look at the distance in terms of time.
A slow 1/2 marathon will take about 3 hours. Let’s assume you have 6 months to trail – that gives you time to taper before the race and to do some test runs in the beginning to see how your body is feeling.
Next establish your beginning point. Most active people can do 20-30 min alternating run/walk if they run at an appropriately slow pace and for a short enough time, for example 2-3 min of running for every 1 min of walking.
This means you need to increase your longest run from 30 min to 3 hours in 6 months. That’s approximately an increase in your long run distance of about 30 minutes a MONTH.
Makes it sound much more doable right?
I don’t generally create a specific run schedule for races. I have principles that I follow and based on the amount of time I have to prepare and the goal distance, I have rough guidelines of benchmarks I should be meeting at certain points in training.
Here’s my principles (they’ve been covered before so if you are a long time reader of the blog humor me by re-reading them):
- Don’t run 2 days in a row unless it’s for a specific purpose (like when long runs get REALLY long and need to be broken up because of scheduling purposes as a back-to-back).
- Don’t run if sore or something seems “off”. Similarly, turn a long run into a short run (or a walk) if everything feels OK but after a mile or two it’s still a mighty effort to keep going forward.
- Run 3-4 days a week.
- Run longer once a week. Other runs are under 1 hour and can be easy, intervals, barefoot, or anything else besides long.
- Once long runs reach 2 hours (10+ miles), increase the time of the long run every other week. Once long runs reach 4-5 hours, I typically do this sort of long run about 1x a month.
- Run by time and effort, not by distance.
- Reassess training goals and progress often (which is why hard and fast training schedules don’t work for me).
Here’s my benchmarks. As long as I’m hitting my benchmarks, I don’t worry about my day-to-day training.
- Long runs at certain points in training. These are usually assigned to a certain week or timing in a month (“late march”) and for added motivation can be scheduled with a friend or at a race of appropriate distance.
With the emphasis that I’m NOT outlining a run-by-run schedule here’s an example of getting from zero to 13.1 miles.
Month 1: Run 3-4 times a week 20-30 minutes.
Month 2: Increase one run a week by 10-15 minutes per week to create a long run.
1 – 30/30/40
2 – 30/30/50
3 – 30/30/1 hour
4 – 30/30/1 hour
Month 3: Continue to increase the time of the long run. Bench mark of 1 hour run (if you didn’t already get there last month) Now that you can do an hour, it’s not super critical to do it EVERY WEEK as long as 1-2 hour long run gets done every other week.
1 – 30/30/1.5 hour
2 – 30/30/30
3 – 30/30/1 hour 45 min
4 – 30/30/30
Month 4: Bench mark of 2 hours
1 – 30/30/2 hour
2 – 30/30/30
3 – 30/30/1 hour
4 – 30/30/30
Month 5:
1 – 30/30/2 hour
2 – 30/30/30
3 – 30/30/2.5 hours
4 – 30/30/30
Month 6: Benchmark run of 3 hours
1 – 30/30/2 hour 45 min
2 – 30/30/30
3 – 30/30/3 hour
4 – 30/30/30
Month 7: run 13.1 miles
Tada!
For those who are curious, here’s my thought process for the “plan” to get to 100 miles in mid July.
- I need to do 100 miles in mid July.
- I know that if I can do at least 50 miles 4-8 weeks prior I’ll be fine.
- I know that if I do at least 2 runs over 20 miles in the month or 2 before a 50 mile I’ll be fine.
- To do 20 miles I need to have done 12-15 miles in the month prior.
So, after talking to friends that need long runs too (company!) and looking at races in my area here’s my bench marks that I established in January that I knew I needed to hit in order to keep on schedule.
Benchmarks
- 20 mile run with a friend April 1
- 50k (31 mile) run with a friend sweeping a race late April
- 100 k (62 mile) race beginning of June
- 100 mile race mid July
Other considerations
Great! I know that I’ll need to do 4 hour run in May to keep my legs in good shape between the 50k and 100k, and again near the end of June (or a high altitude all-day hike). I’ll schedule those runs/hikes once I find out how my legs are recovering from the benchmarks. But, I’ll keep that in mind as my schedule fills up that I’ll need to allow time at some point to get them done. Those runs aren’t as critical as the benchmarks, but I’ll probably need them in order to hit the benchmarks.
First steps
After doing this sort of general planning, I tend to take it one thing at a time. The first step is getting to that 20 mile run without it killing me. Ideally I wanted to be up to a 1 hour run in January, a 2 or 2 1/2 hour run in February, and a 3 hour run in early March.
Now that it’s early March and the longest I’ve gone is 1 1/2 hour (there was a 2+ hour run in January but I couldn’t build off of it because it retriggered pain from my injury and I wasn’t able to progress from it). So, I need to accelerate this….which is going to be dicey. I’m going to do 2 to 2 1/2 hours this week, 3 hours about 10-12 days later, and then the 20 mile (4-5 hours depending on what shape the trails are in) run 2 weeks after that. If that all goes well then I will have hit my first bench mark and I know I’m on track. Depending on how I feel after the 20 miles I can plan/triage my way to the second bench mark.
I hope this was helpful to those of you trying to visualize how to put together a customized training plan for yourself!
This is so helpful!! Definitely going to implement the suggested training plan – it DOES make it feel doable. I had a good laugh at “of COURSE I will endorse all hair-brained schemes to do crazy things.” 🙂
Oh, one question, and this is really basic, but why not run for mileage? Way back when I was running, that is how I was taught to train, though I can see now why it’s not ideal.
Because depending on terrain and other mental and physical factors, mileage can be really difficult to achieve on that day. Time is also a great mental trick to do if you are having a rough time. It can be difficult to think about how you have 5 miles until you turn around to complete a 10 mile run. BUT, with time you can allow yourself ot take it easy and “just run until the one hour mark and then turn around” and usually you find yourself accomplishing the mileage goal anyways. I think mileage goals are also tricky because you are running on numbers instead of feel and are more likely to do too much or push too hard on a day that you aren’t really feeling it just to see a certain mileage. On long runs thinking of time on your feet instead of a specific mileage goal is also helpful to keep you from going out to hard in the beginning and so learn to run on feel. No matter how hard you run the first hour, if you run fro time and have a 2 hour planned, you still have to do a second hour. That tends to keep your optimism in check. For a ten mile run instead, you might be tempted to bank miles early, which is really not a good idea and not the POINT of a run in most cases. In most cases it’s time on your feet and not the mileage that matters (especially early on if you don’t have a time goal for the race – and you shouldn’t if it’s been a while since you’ve done distance).
Totally makes sense. Wish I knew this 10 years ago, maybe I would have kept running! Here’s to another chance. 🙂
please please PLEASE let me know how it goes!!!!!!! I really want to know! BTW I just did a run according to time this morning – 3 hours. Forgot all my food and the only thing that kept me going was knowing that even if I had to crawl to the finish on a trail short cut as my brain died from lack of glucose….I was only going to be out there for 3 hours. Sure enough, I was hungry and cranky but fine and did my original planned trails….but having that “out” of time was such a mental boost when my hip started hurting and my brain was doing all sorts of funky things. It really does work!