What the heck happened to September?! Seriously, this sucker flew by. But more importantly, I need to start planning! I had decided to take the rest of September easy on my knee and begin legit running/training again in October. You see, I have the big ol’ 29.2 mile race in January, and I will need all the time I can get!
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| Photo repeat: the race that started all the drama! |
I’ve been surprised at how quickly I personally lost my running endurance. When I was training for my marathon, I had worked my way up to 16-mile runs and I was feeling pretty good. However, after 8 weeks of minimal running, I have yet to break the 4 mile barrier. Ugh. Kind of annoying y’all!
Anyway, it’s time for me to sit down and figure out a training schedule! I am definitely one of those people that needs to follow a plan; otherwise, my long runs won’t happen and I’ll be sadly curled up in a ball on the side of a road in Haiti. Guys, that would be kind of embarrassing!
However, I don’t really know how to plan for a 29.2 mile race! For my marathon, I easily found a zillion training plans online. I was following Hal Higdon’s plan up until my injury, and had been very happy with it. But here’s the catch: they don’t really have online training plans for 29.2 mile races! I know that I like the notion around Run Less, Run Faster, and had been happy with 3 solid runs per week with 3 days of cross training. I don’t mind sometimes bumping it up to four runs, but I know my body and 4-5 runs every week will break me down.
19 Comments
You’re in uncharted territory for me, so I’ve got nothing. But I’m anxious to see the responses!
Just find a marathon training plan and use that. Even for a 50 mile run, I would just take a marathon plan, cut out one of the speed work days and make it a tempo run, and extend the long run slightly.
95% of the plans online will work. It just takes time to find the one that works best for YOU. Once you find that plan, you can modify it and reuse it as you see fit.
Congrats, out of the thousands and thousands of post I have read, you are the first person to make break out a calculator, it was like todays post was a homework assignment.
To help you figure out how to adapt a marathon training plan to a 29.2 training plan. 29.2 is 11% longer then a marathon, so take you favorite marathon training plan, take the workout mileage and times it by 1.11 and you will have the adjust difference
ex 10 miles on marathon training plan will be 11.1 miles for a 29.2 plan (10×1.11=11.1)
Hope this might help you
Hahaha, I love that you busted out the calculator! Totally made me laugh 🙂
Learn to use walking breaks. Learn to walk fast. I did my 50K in under 6 hours (I’m not fast) and finished feeling great because of the walk breaks. I walked all the hills and then ran 9 min/walked 1 min. Practice it on your runs. It also helps to keep you from getting injured during your longer runs. Good luck! Any questions, just yell! You’ll do great!
Joe
schulmanwriter@gmail.com
ultra_guy
I so can empathize with losing your endurance during a break. After overtraining this summer, I had to rest because of tendonitis and IT band inflammation around my knee. Now that I’m back running it is taking me a while to break that 4 mile barrier which is why I gave myself about 4 wks on the front end of my marathon trng for January, to ease better into it. I’m doing Hal Higdon’s plan and it works for the most part. Hope we both get our endurance back soon!
Agh, it’s driving me bonkers! I think now it might just be a mental block but it’s still wicked annoying!
I would find a 50k training plan and loosely follow that. Good luck with it!
Wow!! What a distance! You sure are aspiring to greatness! I’ve never even done a half, so I’m not much for advice, but best of luck!! That’s amazing! Spa love!
Jeff Galloway does marathon plans with training runs over 26.2. Honestly, if you hit 26.2, 29 ain’t no thing. I would agree on the 50k plan as well. I do Run Less Run Faster and really enjoy. Mostly because the the prescribed 2 days of tempo and repeats takes all the guess work out. I usually add a day of easy/fun running in with Run Less Run Faster.
PS…Your leg muscles look awesome in that picture!
Haha thanks 🙂
Never hit those number myself, but I am assuming you want to avoid injury. With that said take some breaks and take it slow, listen to your body and you will be fine!
Have you looked for some 50K training plans? I think they would probably get you pretty close.
I’m sure once you break the barrier that’s keeping you at 4, you’ll start to rekindle all that muscle memory
I used the Smart Marathon Training plan for my 50K, worked pretty well.
I second all the suggestions for the 50k training. Technically, “29.2” isn’t a 50k, but it’s less than one mile short of it. And really, the only difference between marathon training and 50k training is a back to back long run. Run 20 miles one day, and then 10 the next (or numbers similar to that)- the point is to get your body use to running on tired legs. Doing one 20+ mile training run probably won’t help much. I would also recommend reconsidering the FIRST plan in Run Less, Run Faster… it’s going to be hard enough on your body to cover that long of a distance that you might not want to push yourself by adding speedwork as well. But as Dean Karnazes says, “listen to everyone, follow no one.”
Good luck!
Agree with some of the above to go with a mararthon plan… once you get to 26 and above, it pretty is much a mental battle. For my 50k (31 miles), I never went higher than marathon distance… ok, i did 28 once, but that is because I was nervous about it being my first. If you did a few 20+, you should be fine. (20, 22, 24)
I would agree with looking at 50K plans, you might want to go up to 25ish.
I hope your training goes well!
I would just train using a marathon plan, going up to 22 miles or whatever the plan you like recommends. I never went over 20 for my 50k. I think the only benefit to doing more is for your own peace of mind, which can be valuable, but physically I think marathon training is fine. I might do what one commenter said and do a few back to back long runs. So the knee is better?
I’m liking the back-to-back long run thing, too. The knee is doing great! It occasionally gets a little sore and that’s my cue to back off, but I’ve actually found that kinesio tape works great on those days. Who knew?!