Aiming for a BQ

I guess I'm becoming predictable.

August 31, 2006:

"I can see, perhaps, starting up in time to run the 2007 San Francisco Marathon, and may even follow that up with an attempt for a Boston Qualifying Time in the California International Marathon in December, 2007."

..and that is exactly what has happened.

Buoyant after surpassing my 3:30 goal in the 2007 San Francisco Marathon, I explored the idea of, and then committed to, running the California International Marathon (CIM) this December 2 with the goal of qualifying for Boston.

For someone my age, I would need to run a certified marathon in 3:15:59 or less. While that's just 12:05 faster than my time in July, those are some significant minutes to carve off.

There were debates amongst several K-Stars as to how many minutes I'd automatically pick up because the CIM course is easier than the San Francisco one, ranging from as many as ten minutes to as few as four minutes. Either way, I decided that I could build upon the training base I had in the Spring and early Summer and prepare myself to meet this new goal.

Thus, my training plan included:

• More miles (greater volume)
• Harder workouts (greater intensity)
  

Greater Volume
I figured that I could peak at 65 miles a week, so I based my new plan on the one I had followed before (Pfitzinger), scaling it up by 18%, and tweaking it a bit to avoid things like running more than 14 miles on a weekday (since I kept the schedule at 5 days per week). A comparison of my last three marathon preparations, prior to tapering, is shown in this graph:


There should be three things evident from this graph:

1. I ran more miles in preparation for CIM than in my previous two, considerably more at peak.
2. I ran far more miles in a particular period (weeks 12-8) than in either of the previous two, owing to the fact that I didn't lose any time to injury this go-around.
3. I like graphs.

Greater Intensity
Since I would need to pick up speed in addition to endurance, I knew I'd need to run harder. I did this by focusing on two kinds of runs.

1. Lactate Threshold (LT)
   
2. Marathon Race Pace (MRP)
   

The Lactate Threshold runs in Pftizinger run every other week or so, and they peter out many weeks before the marathon. Taking a page from Jack Daniels' plan (via Galen), I added in LT workouts so that I had one every week. This often would include a run with two, 20 minute periods running in the LT zone by heart rate. I would end up seeing significant improvement in how fast I was running relative to heart rate, and it is to these workouts that I attribute that improvement. (Example: in April of 2006, I was exploring doing LT runs between 7:00-7:15, and recently, I've been doing LT intervals between 6:25 and 6:35).

The pace I ran at this year's San Francisco Marathon was 7:56/mile. In order to qualify for Boston, I need to run the 26.2 miles at 7:26/mile or less. The Pftizinger plan has a handful of Marathon Race Pace runs, but not enough to assure me that I would be able to adopt a new race pace, 30 seconds per mile faster than previous. So, again, I made sure I had one MRP run per week. I found myself routinely able to average below the pace I'll need to run at CIM.

One Benchmark
So, with the bulk of any improvements behind me (it's time to start tapering), have I improved enough?

With only the reasoning that Galen had done it prior to his Boston Qualifying CIM-run last year, I ran this year's US Half Marathon in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. I finished in 1:30:27, and many people have told me that such a performance indicates I'm ready to run a 3:10 marathon, let alone the 3:15 I need.

So, given how I feel like I'm faster, I've run all my MRP runs within the right pace limits, I have run five 20+ mile runs without any of them feeling that hard, and I ran a great half-marathon, I have reasons to believe I can do it.


Check back after December 2 to see how I did!