Back to Marathon Training

Guys, this is going to be a big post, that I hope, will consume me 20 weeks and will end with a 26.1-mile run (42.195km) in Manhattan, it will be kind of a NYC Marathon revisited, if you will. So, check back weekly and you'll hopefully find updates of this same post, just scroll down to see new stuff.

My last Marathon was the ING NYC Marathon in 2006 which I did in 3h57m38s an average pace of 5:37 min/km or 9:03 min/mi a great mark for an amateur like me in the somewhat difficult course of the NYC Marathon.

After that accomplishment I thought that marathons weren't really healthy and I decided to run half-marathons, but have always found half-marathons boring so kept doing short runs, mostly 10ks. The net result has been the following: I've been running only sporadically, because I don't have goals anymore. Goals are everything you need to keep running in a more serious way.

I want to get back to marathons and I will do it with a program that allows me to run only 3 times a week because I want to make it even more challenging, I want to prove a point. Also, did I mention that I will need to go through Winter in NYC?

I believe this will work out and will help me avoid injuries. My other goal is to do it under 3h:50m:00 (PMP=Predicted Marathon average Pace) and I am assuming my 10k pace (a parameter used in the program) is 8:03min/mile or 5:00min/km. My best 10k ever was in Brazil and I did it in 45min:05s, a pace of 7:15min/mile or (4:30min/km). I will probably never do this time again, so let's keep things sane.

So the parameters are:

	min/km	min/mi	mi/km	1.609344
10k pace	0:05:00	0:08:03
PMP	0:05:27	0:08:46	finish 10k	0:50:00
			finish marathon	3:49:58
Run Type	plus/minus	min/km	min/mi	explanation
Sprints	0:00:45	0:04:32	0:07:18	10k pace minus 45s per mi
Tempo	0:00:20	0:05:12	0:08:23	10k pace plus 20s per mi
PMP+15	0:00:15	0:05:36	0:09:01	long run slower pace
PMP+20	0:00:20	0:05:39	0:09:06	long run slower pace
PMP+30	0:00:30	0:05:46	0:09:16	long run slower pace
PMP+45	0:00:45	0:05:55	0:09:31	long run slower pace
PMP+60	0:01:00	0:06:04	0:09:46	long run slower pace

I decided to add a post for each week.

Cheers,
Mars