Praying and Running

The marathon is cruel. Training for it will beat you up and it will wear you down. It holds out to you the hope of glory but with that hope comes the risk of heart break. While I have been blessed and usually win the glory, I experienced this heartbreak first hand Saturday 11/7/2015 at the 2015 Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. I have gone back and forth about writing this and after a few people have inquired I decided to go ahead and put it out there in case anyone else was wondering. As you all are probably aware, I have been training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon for the last 18 weeks. I had a rough time starting out and mentally and physically committing fully to another marathon training cycle but got that put behind me after several weeks and I dove in. The goal was to run the 2015 Indianapolis Monumental in under 2 hours and 48 minutes. My previous PR was 2 hours 49 minutes and 46 seconds. This was the same goal I had and missed for the 2015 Carmel Marathon back...

This was my big tune-up race for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. I always run a half-marathon at this point in the build up to the Monumental to get a final big fitness boost, a reality check on where I am at fitness-wise and, if all goes well, probably the most important aspect is the confidence boost that I get. I got one heck of a confidence boost yesterday, 10/25/2015, at the Valpohalf Half-marathon in Valparaiso IN. Valparaiso is about 2 hours from home which is kind of right there on the line of driving on race morning or staying in a hotel the night before. This time we decided to get up and drive. Valparaiso is on central time which puts it an hour behind us. Meaning the 8:30 AM start was really a 9:30 AM start for me.  Making the decision to drive that much easier. I have been dealing with some issues on the top of my right foot, which is probably extensor tendinitis, for the last couple of weeks. I saw my soft-tissue guy last Friday. He worked on it some and got...

Last Saturday, 10/17/2015, I ran the Indianapolis Marathon as a training run in my build to the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. I have run the half marathon at this race for the last several years and have used it as a tune-up race and final fitness gauge for what has always been my "A" marathon, the Monumental. This year, the calendar proved a little challenging. This race is usually at the end of my first week of taper. So, I can use it to gauge where I truly am and I am rested enough to run a PR effort which usually results in an actual PR. The way it worked out this year though it was at the end of my biggest block of training both in quality and quantity. Leaving it a full 3 Saturday's out from the Monumental. I have come to rely on my wife as a manager/coach and when I pointed this out to her she had a solution as usual. She suggested I run the full marathon as a final strength workout and find a half-marathon the next week to run as a tune-up race. 21 days is...

I really just finished week 5 according to the plan with the week late start mentioned in the previous training update. About that plan, it went pretty much by the way side over the last couple of weeks due in large part to running Blister in the Sun Marathon on Sunday the 8/2/2015. More on that when I get to it. As I eluded to in my last post, I have really been struggling with getting going in this cycle and I think a lot of it had to do with the vacation to California and then rushing and trying to cram workouts in to get caught up. In the future I think I would simply trust my fitness enough to know that I could have sacrificed that first week and maybe even the second week in order to not start out the cycle stressed and tired. Enough with the psychology and on to the training. Week 4 only had 1 real workout which was a 20 mile long run and 2 other "kinda" workouts with 14 and 12 mile medium long runs. No tempo or race pace workouts scheduled but I skipped the race...

It's marathon training season again. I went back and forth over the off season trying to decide on which training plan I would use this time around. I have always used the plans in Advanced Marathoning by Pete Pfizinger. Because I get bored easily, I was tempted this time to go with Jack Daniel's "Final 12 Week" program found in "Daniel's Running Formula vol. 3." In the end I came back to Pete; "stick with what you know" Since it was by far my best marathon ever, I will be trying to replicate my build up from the last Monumental with the paces just a little quicker to help propel me to a new PR. I got a late start with this cycle because we were on vacation in California the week I should have started. So I basically I planned to run the workouts from week 1 and 3 for the first 2 weeks. I faltered a bit because I had a hard time getting into the groove and getting my mind into the right place. It takes a lot of physical AND mental effort to t...