High-Octane

I'm lost too! Seems like I'm just plodding along without any purpose these days but at least we're getting in the miles.

If your main goal is a marathon this fall, then I think you're doing just fine. Just keep getting in the miles and keep 80% to 90% of them at an easy pace.

Great progression run with a strong finish! We should get together and write a book about making up training runs as you go! lol I agree with SJ & DS though, getting good mileage in is a big accomplishment in summer heat, and surely will pay dividends for the fall!

Btw ... I am doing evening runs so I cam play leapfrog with you & Joe on the mileage board ... but come Thursday or Friday I am going to let you go ... maybe Wednesday! lol

Yeah I was trying to pull so far ahead so you guys that you'd just give up for the week :-) The problem is I'm leaving for vacation on Thursday and will be driving for a couple of days...I think my running may get really sporatic for a while.

One of my favorite scriptures! Looks like it was a great run today. Have you decided on TOU?

Dave,

That's someting I need to figure out. Would "easy" be defined as a "recovery" pace and HR (140 or less for me) or are you describing something other than that when you say "easy"?

Hey Steam,

I'm still debating about TOU. I looked a air flights yesterday trying to figure out the travel. I also went by the local running store and mentioned it to one of my new running friends (he's a real runner). He seemed somwhat interested since he is also trying to qualify for Boston. I'm going to send him some information about the race. I know I need to decide soon!

Yes, you do need to! Fyi, the Half already sold out! That would be awesome if you could get the other local guy to go with you and you both BQ!

I would describe easy as anything from about 30 seconds to about 2:30 minutes slower than marathon pace. In Matt Fitzgerald's book "Brain Training for Runners", he uses what he calls base pace and recovery pace. He has a table to figure out your paces according to recent race times. I don't think any of your race times are as fast as the condition you are in right now. I recall you ran a 5:3? mile the other day so I'm sure you could run a 20 min 5k if not 19:00. So if you take a 20 min 5k time, your recovery pace would be 8:37 to 9:47 and your base pace would be 7:46 to 8:36. That's a pretty big range but he says to gauge a lot of it according to how you feel that day. Unless I'm doing a workout,I usually just like to let my body pick the pace that feels good rather than look at my Garmin and try to hit a certain pace. I would try to keep a couple of your runs [or more] each week in the recovery zone. I don't think you want a whole lot of speed work while you are still building mileage. Once you have a good base it only takes a small amount of speed or tempo work to quickly get into pretty good 5 or 10k shape by adding 2 or 3 race specific workouts in the last couple of weeks before your race. As you get closer to your marathon you'll want to start adding a marathon pace workout that gets longer as the race get's closer. If we were still in our 20s or 30s or even early 40s we could go out and do the 2 hard workouts plus a long run every week that most training schedules have you doing, but I know at least for me I always wind up injured when I try that. Anyway that's what seems to work for me. Hope there's something in all that you can use.

I didn't know the TOU half had sold out. Bummer I was planning to run that. It's one of my favorites. It hasn't sold out in the past until about the last week.

Dave,

Thanks for the explaination it all makes sense. I think I'm keeping within those perameters pretty well. Now I just need to keep building (mainly milage). When I was up to 65 - 75 miles (before the bone spur broke off) I was felling pretty good about the longer runs. Now I'm skeptical every time I go out for anything over 10 miles. I'm planning to build to a base of 60 within the next month and then work from there for my marathon training.