After finishing the Pirates Cove 30K Trail race, I moderated my training pace after a few body parts started complaining and I battled a nasty Respiratory infection. After a couple 5 and 10 k’s, i began to crave the company of my long distance training mates from Fleet Feet Sports of Santa Rosa.
It was fortuitous that FF put together a marathon training group with the Healdsburg Wine Country Marathon on 10-10-10 as the goal race. That meshes perfectly with my Fall hunting schedule as I plan to pursue Wyoming Elk in October (17-25).
We have spent the last 4 weeks ramping up our long run mileage, from 10 miles the first week, to 13.1 miles on week 4.
The weekly schedule is 4 days a week of running, with 1 or 2 days of cross training.
- Tuesday is a Speed Workout focusing on increasing our foot turn over and pushing the lactate threshold.
- Wed or Thursday is an Easy run that has been 3 miles but will increase to 4 miles.
- Friday is another run that gradually increases in distance.
- The LONG RUN is Sunday. By week 14 I will run my longest training run of 22-24 miles, with two weeks of shorter runs before the event.
Here are some pictures from our last 3 long runs.
The group on our first long run along Santa Rosa Creek.
Week 2's run was warm.
We had spectators taunting us as they laid in the shade eating.
At the finish of our long run we resurrected an old tradition from previous training groups. Nothing is quite as refreshing as a mimosa, after a run on a hot day.
On Week 4 I implemented the Galloway run walk interval of 6 minutes of running followed with 1 minute of walking. I repeated this pattern 18 times for a long run time of 2:09:55 for the 13.1 miles.
