The Mojo Returnith

So Boulder brought me back to the world of runners again. And just in time I would say. In a phone call on Memorial Day, I was reminded by Chooch that the Chicago Marathon, which is the next one I am scheduled to run, is 18 weeks out as of June 9th. Meaning that's the day that I have to start my training. I have selected the Hal Higdon Advanced II marathon training program for use in Chicago. I will not try to write my own stuff and decided on this one, more so than the Daniels or the Pfitz plans becuase of the marathon I am running. Hal and Chicago go together like a hot shower and a cold beer :-p. It is a proven plan that works for this marathon. I will probably run a few more miles than what is in the plan, but the workouts are what have drawn me to this particular one. Where it fits for me is that I have Fridays and Sundays off from work. Every Friday in this plan is a scheduled rest day, which means I can give my body the full day off. No work, no running, just playing with the dog and enjoying the sunshine. I will just have to resist the urge to spend the day drinking beer while I'm at it. Although I pretty much planning on going booze free for the summer as I head to Chicago. The other part of the plan I like is the back to back hard workouts that take place on the weekends. Thus the Friday off before hand. For example in week 10, after doing hills on Tuesday, that Saturday I am to run 9 miles at "pace" , (meaning marathon pace), which is quite the workout in intself, but then the next day, I have a 19 mile run to do the next day. Sounds fun, huh? Actually to me it does. I talked a little a couple blogs ago about how I felt like my mid week stuff, my non LR or speedwork runs were not very good as I trained for Colorado. I mixed long runs and pace runs together, thinking it would make me stronger, but it just cut the corner and allowed my mid week runs to just be miles instead of anything beneificial.

As we enter the month of June, I am embarking on the North v. South Challenge on RW as well as many others from the forums. The first 3 weeks of this plan, my miles will be a little higher than what's scheduled, as I will be logging quite a few miles for the North team. I am beginning the month tomorrow with my longest run since my marathon at the begining of last month, and if all goes well, will surpass the 100 mile mark at least once during the month, although I am hoping for twice, but I'm not going to risk my marathon over it. I figure around 350 for the month for me. And that still leaves me where my long runs for my plan are 13, 14, and 10 as we enter the first 3 weeks of July. I talked about being very business like when I ran Boulder at the beginning of this last week, well, that's the way this training is going to be.

I am still trying to get back into the routine of getting up early in the morning again. I so want to be an early morning runner, but am not there yet. By the 9th of June, I hope to be doing my running in the morning, then after work, I can head to the gym for 2 nights a week of light weight lifting, 2 nights a week of core work, 2 nights a week of swimming, and then still making Friday go to the gym and sit in the hot tub and resting day. It's hard to believe that it's almost time for me to start training again, yet here we go.

I plan to run the Bakers Dozen trail half marathon next Sunday and have a 5k scheduled the week after that. I will probably keep racing throughout the summer, just to keep me moving and motivated, while working it in with my training.

Happy last day of May folks...