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!