6.5k is week 2 of a marathon plan

[rmc28]

I found a marathon training plan to suit my lifestyle! Jeff Galloway's website was linked from C25k.com, where I originally found information about Couch tp 5k.  The plan consists of 2x 30 minute runs a week, an "easy walk" and a long run.  The long run gets longer over time - I like the rhythm of how it develops with long-short-long-short and then long-short-short-long-short-short as it gets into the really long distances.  Anyway, it turns out that with my Saturday 5k, I'd already effectively completed week 1.

Mr Galloway is also very keen on walking breaks and has some sensible-sounding reasoning about giving muscles a chance to recover and preserving strength to keep up pace all the way through.  I felt a bit resistant to this, especially because I never used to be able to run continuously for any length of time before c25k.  However, the walking breaks are clearly part of his plan, as much as the relatively light training programme, so I felt I should at least try them.   I felt that doing the 1min:1min suggested by my 5k running pace of 8min/km (approx 13 min/mile) would drive me mad, so opted for 2min:1min as the ratio for the next-fastest pace.

I set up a workout in RunKeeper to do the timing for me, and also set up my own spreadsheet version of the plan.  This translates the raw plan-from-the-websites into the units I use; then on another sheet I have my own copy of the training plan, with rounded distances in km and dates against week numbers, to help me forward plan and think about events that might be possible to enter next year.

Then I got a filthy cold and spent four days mostly in bed.

Thursday was my first day feeling fully well again, and I decided not to push things by running immediately, but took a lunchtime walk instead.

Today I decided I was feeling well enough for a full long run, and did 6.5km with the run:walk breaks.  I'd dialled down RunKeeper notifications quite a lot - only distance, only at full kilometers, as well as the timed changes of pace.  I found it fairly easy to adapt to and not as irritating as I'd feared.  I finished feeling quite tired but not exhausted, which is what I'm aiming for in terms of pushing my limits (also, I can't afford to exhaust myself on a Saturday morning - I have too much else to do at the weekend).

After I finished I found my overall pace for the 6.5k was 7:40 min/km, faster than any of my continuous 5k runs.  So I am cautiously convinced about walking breaks on longer runs, but I'm going to up the ratio to 2m30: 1min for the next long run, and I'm just going to run continuously for my weekday zombie runs.

Comments

[liv]

Cool, that sounds like a really helpful training plan, I hope it goes well and you enjoy it. Yay spreadsheets, and yay for a good long run on Saturday without exhausting yourself. (The walking breaks stuff makes me feel better about the fact that I'm walking to recover from the sprints in the Zombies game.)