A Change of Plans

Last night I registered for the Baton Rouge Beach Marathon, solidifying a recent change in plans. This will take the place of the Mississippi Blues Marathon. I determined that running a marathon closer to home just made more sense. (Money lost in registration will be more than made up in travel savings.)

The down side to this change is that it bumps my race date up by four whole weeks. I feel like my base is really strong, but I do worry the lost weeks. The upside is that the course is a much less challenging course, so I hope things will break even.

Either way...I am doing 26.2 in 12 days.

Bouncing Back Nicely

Saturday I completed my 15 miler incident free. Just as a precaution, I soaked my ankle in a bucket of ice water when I finished my run, but gratefully I had no lingering effects yesterday or on my run this morning.

I now consider myself back on schedule for my training. In fact, I just finished mapping out this weekend's 19 miler on http://www.mapmyrun.com/. Due to scheduling this will be my longest solo run in a couple of years. I will do the long run on Friday, as I am running the Cajun Cup on Saturday. (It will be my son's first 10K race. He is looking forward to it, I am just along for the ride.)

New shoes, should arrive tomorrow, along with some new socks and shorts later this week. Yipee.

A Tester

All of my runs have gone well this week, but tomorrow is the test. It will be my first long run (15 miles) since my ankle started to bother me. If all goes well I will return to my full training plan on Monday, if not, I will return to my previously scheduled bad mood (just kidding....sort of).

In the meantime, I will be reading about the maximum daily dosages for Advil.

A Blip

After repeating on an almost daily basis "this is the best prepared I have ever been at this stage of marathon prep" the unthinkable occured.

An injury. Coming off vacation, I suddenly developed a severe pain in the top my foot/ankle which Dr. WorldWideWeb and I have diagnosed to be a tendon problem. I ran for a few days with clenched teeth but realized that was not going to be a long term strategy. So I shut it down for nearly a week and sat around the house being grumpy, eating everything in sight.

Thankfully, my first two days back on the road (slightly scaled down) have been encouraging. I experienced a little discomfort but was easily able to finish each run.

So with 67 days remaining till the Mississippi Blues Marathon, I would encourage each of you to buy stock in Advil because I am not giving up this easy (and my registration is non refundable.)

Marathon training

For my first two marathons I used Hal Higdon training schedules, http://www.halhigdon.com/marathon/Mar00index.htm first the Intermediate I and then then I stepped up to the Intermediate II. I could not have run a marathon without these schedules building me up for the big race.

The one draw back to the schedules is they did not prescribe the pace to run. Even a few that did give me a pace to train at, never told me what pace to attempt on race day. (The result was a colossal meltdown on the second half of my first marathon. At the finish line my wife was certain I was about to die....I knew there was no way I was going to get off that easy!)

Experience gained that day made my second marathon a much better experience. However, I was still guessing about training paces and race pace.

But this year I discovered McMillan pace charts. http://www.mcmillanrunning.com/Running%20University/Article%201/mcmillanrunningcalculator.htm They are fantastic! Punch in a recent race result and the site will give you a goal pace for every distance from 100 meters to marathon, including long runs, tempo runs and recovery runs.

A few weeks into my training and I have never felt so confident and prepared. If only I did not continue to read about how "challenging" the Mississippi Blues Marathon course is, I would almost guarantee a sub 4:00 result!

Oh well, at least the training will go well. After all that is more than half the fun.

And the Marathon is......

I have been tentatively planning to run my third marathon this winter, but had not yet selected the specific race. I had actually registered for Houston but sold my registration when the logistics did not work.

The race needed to be not too far from SW Louisiana, not too small and not too warm. It also needs to fit into some existing travel plans our family has made.

With that in mind.....I am please to announce that the marathon is.....The Mississippi Blues Marathon in Jackson, MS on January 3, 2009. http://www.msbluesmarathon.com/

The race is a Saturday race which is a nice bonus for a pastor. The downside is that of the 47 reviews (www.marathonguide.com/races/racedetails.cfm?MIDD=2795090103) approximately....all of them choose to describe the race as challenging or difficult. Apparently Jackson has some hills. This may jeopardize my chances to achieve my goal of breaking 4:00.

At the same time, these same reviewers all raved about the race. So they must be doing something right.

I am looking forward to the race and getting underway with the training.