Upping the Distance

For the past 2 years, despite having run a few half marathons I have been primarily concerned with shorter races such as the mile and the 5K.  I’ve avoid doing many long races besides the 3 half marathons in that time but all that is about to change.  I have been heartened by my recent improvement in both my races and training and have decided to start running longer races this spring.

To that end I am starting a new training cylce that will finish with on May 1st with the Flower City Half Marathon here in Rochester, NY.  Leading up to that goal race I am going to run a 10k, 10 mile and 15K race.  I’m hoping to PR in each of them since I’ve never raced a 15K and my 10k/10 mile PR’s are really quite bad.  I’m also taking a different approach to this training cycle.  I’ve been basing much of my training off Daniels theories, and they have served me well but I feel it is time for a change.  I’m going to lean heavily of Brad Hudson’s adaptive training method for this training cycle and through the summer.  If I don’t see the improvements I was hoping for by this fall I’ll probably go back to Daniels.

As with any training method I think it is imporant to know what works for you.  So while I am using much of Hudson’s theories to guide my training I am not abandoning those things which I know work well for me.  For me to run my best I need to keep some mile race pace work spread throughout my training which isn’t something Hudson would suggest.  He feels running 10% faster than your goal race pace in the final 4-6 weeks of your training is a waste of energy.  I know from experience if I don’t do that faster running I get very flat and don’t race well at all. 

My first race of the “Spring” will be the last Freezeroo race of the year which is a 10K.  Hopefully that will give me a decent sense of pacing for my workouts the rest of the training cycle.  So here is to running long!

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  1. It sounds like a good plan to me. Sometimes just changing the training stimulates some systems that haven’t been getting as much boost as they should and the results are great. Brad Hudson certainly has had great success with his half-marathon/marathon runners so it’s hard to argue with his success. It will be fun to watch how this turns out.

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