It’s always hard to (kind of) reach your goals for the year and then wonder what to do with yourself for the last few months. Having been here before, I knew that I was liable to have a little unfocused slump, so I’ve made a (sort of) plan.
Kind of? Sort of? What’s all this woolly ambiguity?
Okay, well, firstly my goals:
My aim was to do two marathons in the year, to replicate my 2015 attempts. Back then, I found that I had sped up amazingly, and could do a half marathon in under two hours by September, so I knew I could have performed a lot better on my second marathon if I had done my best.
This time around, that hasn’t been the case. I’ve got a little bit stronger and perhaps a bit faster on my shorter runs but not much better on the long distance. In my head, at the beginning of this year, I was going to put my marathon efforts to bed after this autumn one, but instead I’ve signed up for at least one other marathon and a 50K ultra next year. This is because I’m determined to get under 5 hours eventually. So perhaps not quite reaching my initial goal is a good thing. It’s spurred me on to try a bit harder for a little bit longer.
My plans for the rest of this year are as follows:
- One more week of no plans. And then,
- Create a plan to get my parkrun time to below 27 minutes before the end of the year. I’m currently eleven seconds off that. I am going to include one interval session and one hill rep session a week. Don’t quite know exactly what that will look like but I’ll make it up as I go along.
- Run one long run at zone 2 on a weekly rotation of 2 hours/3 hours/4 hours. For me that will be an average heart rate of around 135, which I think is currently 13 to 14 minutes a mile. This will take real discipline as I’ll feel like I’m practically walking, but getting this time on my feet without increasing my chances of injury will hopefully keep my stamina maintained while I’m concentrating on other things.
- Keep up the 25/30 miles a week that I’ve maintained for marathon training.
- Somewhere in the mix, I also want to lift heavy weights but I need to find out how I can do this without damaging any body parts.
So, I think I know where I’m heading, and roughly, how to get there. Maybe.
theleadlesspencil 
Nothing like public commitment to aid determination. Looks like a good plan – I’m an advocate of hill reps so those and interval sprints are very likely to deliver the goods. I use machines in the gym as I think they are probably safer than free weights for a novice like me – but proper advice would be a good idea.
Yes, apart from stuff I’ve read on the inter web, I’m completely new to the subject. So I do need some real person guidance.