The Blahs and a Marathon Plan
Geez louise, this weather has me totally out of it. I've been so exhausted this week that I feel like I need coffee around 4pm. Not to mention the fact that I stayed up late Tues night to watch Losing it with Jillian. Did you see it? It will be on again next Tuesday at 8pm.
It's a great opportunity for families who are struggling with weight issues (as a result of other internal issues) to have Jillian help motivate them to shed some of that excess baggage! The first episode was pretty powerful. I even teared up at one point.
On the same note, I just started Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald. While I'm not too far into it, it's the concept of fueling yourself and exercising properly to reach that optimal weight that allows for your body's best performance. This book is focused specifically toward the endurance athlete and not the average gym goer. At this point, I don't see myself going on any hard core nutrition plan, but I may find some easy tweaks I can make that will help during this next marathon training session.
And speaking of marathon training, I still need to select a plan. My friend D gave me a few of the FIRST programs which allow you to run 3-4 times a week, but focus on quality of exercise. One of these may be for me, but I need to go over them a little more. Interesting tidbit: FIRST stands for Furman Institute of Running & Scientific Training.
There are so many training plans out there that I highly suggest you find one that really will work for you. Because if you choose one that won't (and I've done it before), your training will be haphazard rather than focused and strong. A few places I've chosen my former training plans from are the Runner's World training section and Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide by Hal Higdon. I also have friends who've paid for elite runners/coaches to write them a plan specific to them. If you've trained for and raced a half or full, how did you select your training plan? Did you create your own?
Okay, off to run in the rain! I hope it wakes me up before we start this 1,000m SPEED stuff. Ugh...
It's a great opportunity for families who are struggling with weight issues (as a result of other internal issues) to have Jillian help motivate them to shed some of that excess baggage! The first episode was pretty powerful. I even teared up at one point.
On the same note, I just started Racing Weight by Matt Fitzgerald. While I'm not too far into it, it's the concept of fueling yourself and exercising properly to reach that optimal weight that allows for your body's best performance. This book is focused specifically toward the endurance athlete and not the average gym goer. At this point, I don't see myself going on any hard core nutrition plan, but I may find some easy tweaks I can make that will help during this next marathon training session.
And speaking of marathon training, I still need to select a plan. My friend D gave me a few of the FIRST programs which allow you to run 3-4 times a week, but focus on quality of exercise. One of these may be for me, but I need to go over them a little more. Interesting tidbit: FIRST stands for Furman Institute of Running & Scientific Training.
There are so many training plans out there that I highly suggest you find one that really will work for you. Because if you choose one that won't (and I've done it before), your training will be haphazard rather than focused and strong. A few places I've chosen my former training plans from are the Runner's World training section and Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide by Hal Higdon. I also have friends who've paid for elite runners/coaches to write them a plan specific to them. If you've trained for and raced a half or full, how did you select your training plan? Did you create your own?
Okay, off to run in the rain! I hope it wakes me up before we start this 1,000m SPEED stuff. Ugh...
Comments
Funny, I just had a "I need to start training for something" epiphany while sitting on my butt waiting for the rain to let up, and I decided to revisit my 1/2 marathon goal (just posted my thoughts on it). I decided by default to use Hal Higdon's plan because it's really the only one I know of, but it seems much more my pace than the FIRST plan you mention.
I'm really curious about other plans people use - I'm still shopping too!
I am using a McMillan Training plan that I bought on his website at www.mcmillanrunning.com. It wasn't super cheap, but I was able to get a program custom made for me. That includes one rest day and one cross training day per week. Since I've never run a marathon, we'll see how it all works out. In the future, I might experiment a little more on my own, but for the first one I am doing the training as suggested.
I've also flipped through that Racing Weight book - the concept is definitely interesting, but I didn't find anything "new" in there. Either way, its always good to refresh on sports nutrition stuff :)
It's overcast & humid here today; coupled w/ the ridiculous sinus headaches I've had all week, I am feeling extremely 'blah'. I am really hoping that I can get a run in today as that will really help, but we'll see if I get another ridiculously paralyzing headache like I have the last 2 days. :( At least I am getting sick now & not during marathon training, though!!
As far as trainig, I've decided to go with one of those elite runners/coaches and have her put together a very specific plan for me. I probably won't do this again, but since I'm hoping to a 10/10/10 marathon and am coming off of a pelvic stress fracture, it made sense to me.
Thanks for all the great feedback everyone! I need to get crackin' on making this decision. I guess running longer on the weekends for this half marathon doesn't have me too worried about selecting a plan yet.
After talking with some friends who had run a number of marathons, I used the Hal Higdon rookie plan as a base last year. I'm not sure it was my optimum plan, but it saw me through.