Friday, October 16, 2009

Training With Purpose, or Shut Up and Listen to Jeff!

Ok, so my wife and I are training for our second half marathon. This one will be a Rock and Roll race in San Antonio. Neither of us have ever done a Rock and Roll event, but I have heard good things. We're both pretty excited about it.

So after having done our first half in February and feeling seriously ill prepared in hind sight, I set out to find a new and improved training plan for this one. I looked at Jeff Galloway, Hal Higdon, FAST, Marathon for Mortals, Runner's World, Ryan Hall, well I think you get the idea. So, after much discussion we decided on a modified Galloway plan and we headed into the sun rise with our confidence high and our running shoes tied tight!! A few weeks in, however, I got the nagging feeling I've been here before and was getting that chill down my neck about being under prepared, which wasn't on my list things to do. Having trained from the couch to a half marathon in 10 weeks was no easy task. I did a lot of work. I also saw, in my opinion, very poor results. I finished in 3 hours, my expectation was about 2:30. It has bothered me since. Taking some of the accomplishment away from finishing.

Through a set of slightly unusual, but not crazy circumstances, a gentleman named Jeff Kline and I stumbled upon one another. Jeff is a endurance training coach, who I highly recommend. His website is here, Anyway, we started trading emails and the next thing ya know we had signed up for his beginner half marathon plan.

The mileage went up, the purpose of each run was spelled out, strength training was introduced and I saw ALMOST NO CHANGE in performance... for a month. Then it happened on a Sunday long run, I didn't feel particularly different. I didn't eat or drink anything special. No new shoes or gear or music, but I was running almost 2 minutes per mile faster and my heart rate was only a tiny bit higher. So after about a week of calling BS on Jeff's grand plan, I actually stood in the walk way to my front door after running 9.5 miles and not breathing hard, I said out loud to no one, "Jeff is actually right"

I walked inside and felt none of the prior tiredness and exhaustion of my previous long runs. It in short it felt great. For the first time since starting this round of training I actually thought I'd run a time close to my goal. I've got a month left to train and I'm really looking forward to training on purpose!!
 
Add to Technorati Favorites