Marine Corps Marathon: Training Week 1

Overview:

Looks like the die has been cast, and I’m officially registered for this year’s Marine Corps Marathon. I will admit that hitting the ‘register’ button was an impromptu decision that took place around 1 or 2 am. Although I knew nothing about this marathon at the time of registering, many folks have said that I should give it a shot.

Since I alway complain about the temperatures while training for fall marathons during the summer, this meme is perfect for me.

Training:

While I was excited to start my training plan, my body had other plans because I caught a bit of a head cold on Tuesday/Wednesday. Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad, and I think it’s going away. I will say this Frendadol Forte, which I call “Fernando”, from Spain has worked wonders for my head cold.

Since this was my first week training, I don’t think is a lot to report on. For me, the first week of marathon training is just getting into the flow of things. Over all this week’s plan was a few 3 mile runs with a 6 mile “long run”

Fortunately for me, I live pretty close to Sligo Creek Trail, which is about 10.5 miles in length. Overall, the trail/path is nice; however, portions of the trial cross busy streets and enter residential areas. I will be honest and say that I have a concern (or two) about the residential areas that the trial crosses. A couple of my fears:

• Some residents assuming that I’m trying to break into houses or cars.

• Police stopping me because I ‘fit the description’ of someone else.

So far, neither of these things have happened, but I have to admit that they do stay on my mind while running.

LONG RUN CHRONICLES:

While this week’s long run was only 6 miles, it felt nice running a 3+ mile distance. Although I have completed multiple half and full marathons, I want to started from scratch for my Marine Corps Marathon training. According to the Runner’s World’s Training Pace Calculator, my long runs should be completed within a 12:04 – 13:32 min/mi pace.

However, this pace felt really slow for me while doing my long run. I guess that I should see if I’ll still think the pace is too slow once I start hitting 13+ mile long runs. For now, I’ll stick with the this pace and enjoy running (technically jogging) in nature.

RUNCHAT SCAVENGER HUNT:

Since running (for me) is about accomplishing things. I’m glad that my marathon training will overlap with the Runchat’s yearly scavenger hunt.

Goals for the week:

-Stay consistent. 😉

-Start incorporating strength training into my marathon training. Our apt building has a very basic gym, so I do not have any excuses for not doing any weight training.

-Look up some running clubs and organizations in the area. I wonder if this area has something similar to New York Road Runners with a schedule of local races.

Marine Corps Marathon: Training Week 0

Overview:

Looks like the die has been cast, and I’m officially registered for this year’s Marine Corps Marathon. I will admit that hitting the ‘register’ button was an impromptu decision that took place around 1 or 2 am. Although I knew nothing about this marathon at the time of registering, many folks have said that I should give it a shot.

Since the Marines are known for their attention to detail, determination, and resilience, I figure that this marathon should be well-organized. Let’s see if my assumption is correct on October 29, 2023. Since most of the reviews about this marathon on Bibrave have been positive, I guess I shouldn’t have anything to worry about . . . outside of the unpredictable mid-Atlantic weather.

Training:

Ok, it’s no secret that both my running times and weight have increased over the last year. . . errr last few years. I thought this would be a great way to start getting my physical fitness life together. Also, it will give me a chance to explore my new city (Silver Spring, MD) by running new routes and meeting other runners in the area.

For my 8th or 9th marathon, I’m gonna go with a well-trusted Hal Higdon training plan. Although I have completed several marathons, I decided to do the novice marathon plan because I feel like novice. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to start from the beginning.

The plan looks pretty straight-forward with 4-5 runs per week over an 18-week period. In addition to this plan, I have decided to incorporate specific running paces that I’ve obtained from Runner’s World’s Training Pace Calculator (link: ***).

Runner’s World has a pretty cool training calculator that spits out recommended paces for easy, tempo, VO2 max, speed form, long, and Yasso 800s training runs. Right now, my marathon goal is 4:45, which more than likely will change over the next few months. Not to piss on myself, I have a feeling that I probably should shoot for a 5:15 finishing time since I’m trying to get back into a decent running shape. I think Wednesdays will be my intense training days where I will do either a tempo, VO2 max, speed form, and or Yasso 800 training run. Here’s a look at my weekly schedule:

• Monday: 3 – 5 mi easy run

• Tuesday: Rest

• Wednesdays: 3 – 10 mi with one of the following workouts – easy, tempo/pace, VO2-max, speed form, or Yasso 800s

• Thursdays: 3 – 5 mi easy

• Friday: Rest or X-Train

• Saturday: 6 – 20 mi (long run)

• Sunday: X-Train or Rest

Here’s some information from Runner’s World about the different types of runs:

• Easy runs builds your aerobic fitness and should represent 80-90% of their weekly training.

• Tempo runs help improve running economy and form. They are sometimes described as ‘threshold’ or 'hard but controlled' runs.

• VO2-max runs help improve running economy and racing sharpness.

• Speed form runs improve leg turnover (or stride frequency), power, running economy, and relaxation while running.

• Long runs form the foundation of all marathon training programs - they build everything from confidence to discipline to your fat-burning.

• Yasso 800s serve as a very general indicator of marathon finishing time. If I want to finishing this marathon in 4:45, I should aim to run ten 800 meter repeats in 4 minutes and 45 seconds.
  

The Course:

The course looks very interesting; this will be the 1st marathon where I’ll leave the state from which the marathon starts. It looks like the first four miles will take us through some bits of Arlington, Va, the next 16 miles will have us winding through the streets of Washington DC and Potomac “Island” (actually, I’m not sure it’s actually called that), then the last five miles will take us through Arlington to the finish. Hopefully, the finish will involve a few beers and a few slices of pizza.

Aside from a little climb around Mile 2, the course looks pretty flat and “easy”, which is an A+ in my book.

Conclusion:

Let’s see where the next 139 days will take me. Like 2 Hyped Brothers and A Dog said in their classic Doo Doo Brown: Act like a tennis shoe and just do it!

One City (Half) Marathon Training Wk “6"

PLANNED MILES: RUN AS YOU FEEL WEEK

COMPLETED MILES: ???

We're getting there!!! Finally, this half marathon is next week. Since nothing really interesting has happened during this training week, I guess that I'll do random thoughts about running and fitness.

RUNNING

-While the One City Half Marathon is less than a week away, I have to Gob (from Arrested Development) myself:

Why? Bib pick-up is on Friday, and I have to arrive at the parking site by 6 am to catch the shuttle to the start line. That’s not an issue, but Newport News is about 45 minutes away (and 33 miles) from where I live. Basically, I have to make TWO Newport-VA Beach round trips in the span of two days. Forget free parking, could I also get a gas voucher? Hey, these are the things we do to get a tech shirt and a medal. 😉 Regarding race day, I wonder if I should stay with a family member who lives a little close to Newport News.

-At this point, it’s kind of “it is what it is.” I’m pretty much going to do this run as a run-as-you-feel half marathon.

-Since my local rec center is closed until March 1st, I had the opportunity to check out a couple of other Virginia Beach rec centers. I’ll say VB Parks & Rec overall has done a great job with its rec centers because they definitely have improved since I was a youngin’ living in the Old Dominion state.

-One LOL during one of my rec center experiences. Um, why the hell is the stretching area in front of two single-user restrooms?

I don’t know who was more embarrassed: 1. me, who was engaged in multiple weird and awkward yoga poses, or 2. the people going in and out of the restroom? Maybe I was more embarrassed because I would assume the regulars are used to it. 😉 Oh, I gotta give the rec centers mad props (do people still use that term?) for having free lockers.

Again, when I was a youngin, I remember pissing off my parents by realizing that I had to put something in or take something out of a locker AFTER closing. Back in the day, the lockers were 25 cents (and you had to use quarters) every time you locked it.

-Danza Kuduro probably is one of my favorite go-to songs when starting a cardio (eg running, spinning) workout.

-During my self-directed spin workout, I had the opportunity to hear different versions of "Gloria" in three different languages (English, Italian - the original, and Spanish). It's kind of funny because my 6hr playlist was on shuffle, but it played all three versions within a 45 min workout.

Long Run Chronicles:

Eh, nothing to report here.

INTERMITTENT FASTING:

No major updates. However, I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to my weigh-in on the 1st

TRAINING PLAN:

Goals for the week:

-You know what? No goals this week. 😉

-I lied. Investigate some spring half marathons. Since we are traveling to Spain in April, I want to shoot for another half marathon in May. Actually, I should double to check to see if there will be any races of interest held during our visit. Unfortunately, I already checked,  and Rock n Roll Madrid occurs the week after our trip.

Long Run Playlist:

I think my playlist for my upcoming half marathon (errrr, I mean half marathons) is ready. Actually, I take that back because I would like to add a few Broadway musical tunes to this playlist. It seems as if taking things back is a theme for this week’s training update.

One City (Half) Marathon Training Wk “5"

PLANNED MILES: 17

COMPLETED MILES: 12

Another week, another fun running journey.

I saw this meme on Twitter and chuckled. It reminded me of the 1st time I went for a run during my graduate years. That run pretty much happened because I wanted to run away from my experiments and some of my coworkers. To be frank, it was either go for a run or catch a case.

RUNNING

Over the past couple of weeks/months, I have mentioned my desire to find alternative places to do my training and long runs just for a little variety because I typically run in two places: the rec center or Mt. Trashmore Park.

During Sunday’s run, it hit me. Mt. Trashmore probably is one of the best places for me to run for a couple of reasons.

• It’s super close – about 3 miles from my house.

• The park allows one to have a range of running workouts. I don’t think that I’ve had the same long run since moving to the area. You have so many combinations of routes with various levels of difficulty. For example, you can simply run the perimeter of the park for a pretty easy terrain or you can incorporate one or both of the park’s hills (“mountains”). Eek, speaking of combinations (and I guess permutations) reminds me of those stupid formulas from middle/high school math: nPr (premutation) and nCr (combination). You know I never really “understood” those things until graduate school. I only understood those in graduate school because I had a part-time job as an SAT tutor, so I really had to learn them to teach the youth.

While I’m not saying it is the absolute best place to run, it works for me. One con of doing training runs at Mt. Trashmore: the birds will use your car as a toilet when you park near Lake Trashmore. Normally, I don’t get too upset with a little bird poop. However, in this case, I was annoyed because I just washed and waxed the car a few days ago.

Perhaps, this was karma getting back at me for complaining about my weird poop schedule before this week’s long run.

Now that I’m a few weeks away from one of my two March half-marathons, I’m at the point where I just want to get them over with. That said, I’m still enjoying my training runs now that I’m running a half instead of a full in March. For instance, I did not run as many hill intervals as I would have liked to on Wednesday, but I really enjoyed the workout.

The idea pretty much was to run the span of the highest point of the big "mountain" for about 45 minutes and do a recovery jog around the perimeter of the "mountain". Unfortunately, I had to alternate between running and walking the hills. Hopefully, I will get to the point where I can do this training run for at least 30 minutes without having to walk.

Long Run Chronicles:

This week’s 10-mile long run went pretty well. For this weekend’s long run, I ran several laps around the park and followed each lap with a big hill.

Now, that I'm getting decent and consistent distance under my belt, I think that it's time to crank it up a little. Actually, I'll take that back. Let me focus on running the whole stretch, then cranking up the speed. For now, I'm still alternating between running and walking for my long runs. Typically, I will run 0.75 miles and walk for 0.25 miles. While I know it is perfectly acceptable to walk during a long run, perhaps, I can work on running the 0.75 miles a bit faster.

What an interesting coincidence: During one of my walk cycles, I noticed that Tamta's Replay was playing while I hit 8.08 miles.

It’s “funny” because the singer says something like: I know you miss the taste, and my heart beats like an 808. You need my love on replay, replay, replay, replay, replay.

Hey, I didn’t say that it’s a lyrical masterpiece. ;)

INTERMITTENT FASTING:

Since IFing is going well, I'm gonna start integrating Beachbody's 21-day Fix (at least during the weekdays) for my feedings. For this plan, the daily number of food containers for the various food groups is calculated by using your weight, basal metabolic rate, workout calorie burn, calorie deficit (if you want to lose weight).

I’ve tried doing this a few times in the past, but it never really worked out because:

• I don’t think I was as dedicated and motivated to do it. Hey, we were in the pandemic when I first considered this program, and you don’t really notice weight gain while you are working from home in sweatpants.

• I found that I was still hungry with the portion amounts. Since I now am satiated with less food thanks to IFing, perhaps, it will not be as difficult to stick to the daily container amounts as in the past.

• It takes quite a bit of meal planning.

TRAINING PLAN:

Goals for the week:

-Increase the intensity of my non-easy runs.

-Nightly stretching and foam rolling. I know this has been up here for a while, but I’m still not consistently doing this. I’ve changed the time of my alarms so I’ll do these earlier in the evening rather than an hour before going to sleep.

Long Run Playlist:

I think my playlist for my upcoming half marathon (errrr, I mean half marathons) is ready. Actually, I take that back because I would like to add a few Broadway musical tunes to this playlist. It seems as if taking things back is a theme for this week’s training update.