Life is just too short. As someone said, this isn't the Zombie Apocalypse. I'm enjoying time with my daughters, work has become much more enjoyable, I feel the healthiest ever, and things in the R seem to be improving. If things go pear shaped, I can handle it. I wouldn't really change much of what I'm doing. Just damn happy to be alive, and enjoying life for the first time in years.
Taking care of the girls will be fun by myself. I'm a great Mr. Mom...
Going to keep training for my 5K, write an article that's due, have my sister and BIL over for dinner tomorrow. Read some good books I found at the library yesterday, and hopefully watch some movies after the kids are tucked in. Need to hit the gym at least three days, but that's been hard lately.
And maybe even get a few pages of my novel written.
I've never run a marathon, though I'm aiming for the 1/2 Marathon next spring. No idea how to train for one!
A 5K is pretty easy. I usually run 1-2 miles a day, so what I'm doing now is just trying to get my mile times down. Then I'll work the distance up to 5K and see how I feel...
My wife is the same way. Though she walked/ran about 3 miles the other day. I'm going to try and get her to run with me when she gets back. The girls can follow us on their bikes.
For good beginner programs look up the names Hal Higdon and Jeff Galloway (the Galloway plans are even walk/run plans and are helpful for avoiding injury in beginning marathoners). Most beginner marathon training is focused on three components.
1) THE LONG RUN -- the most critical is the weekly long run (usually the Sat AM run). It gets progressively longer during training with no more than an average 10% increase per week across the training schedule and peaking at a run of 20-23 miles 3 weeks before the race (the rule of thumb for recovery is 1 day per mile run so you don't want to do a LONG run too close to the race). Many plans also have step-down weeks (like where you might run 12 miles, then 13 miles, then 7 miles, then 15 miles for the long runs). The long run is run SLOWLY (as much as 1-2 minutes/mile slower than your planned race pace) and in your fat-burning aerobic zone. The idea is you are burning fat and TRAINING your body to be able to run and use fat as its fuel source (because you need to minimize how much your body uses carbs when you run on race day because you can't store enough glycogen in your liver to provide carb needs for the whole race -- part of the experience of THE WALL is thought to be related to your body depleting its carbohydrate reserves so your body needs to know how to run on body fat as fuel.
2) CONSISTENT, CUMULATIVE MILEAGE -- Lots of filler "junk" runs between the long runs increasing gradually in length from 30 to up to about 60 min/run, but usually to no longer than an hour in length with a frequency of like 5-6x/week. For beginners, cumulative weekly mileage goes up from like around 20 miles/week to 40-50 miles/week by the peak weeks.
3) BUILT-IN RECOVERY / CROSS-TRAINING -- The biggest obstacle to successful marathon training in beginners is to avoid injury, not an endurance problem in completing runs. So, most beginner plans ENFORCE days off (or at least non weight-bearing cross-training) the day after long runs and also to LISTEN to your body and spirit for signs of breakdown or exhaustion and cross-train accordingly. Better to skip a run or two or cross-train than to break down and lose 3-4 weeks to overuse injury.
There are some interesting parallels to DBing and marathon training....
Last edited by bustorama; 09/20/1004:29 PM.
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