Happy Holidays, everybody!

Attached is the long run schedule which goes from Dec. 26 - May 2nd. This schedule is an 18 week training schedule with the goal of running a marathon on May 2nd. Three marathons are on May 2nd; Tacoma, Eugene and Vancouver BC.  It's actually 19 weeks long because I'm skipping a week in February while I bask in the sun on a cruise ship. :) For those who are interested, I've included how many miles I plan on running each weekend so if you want to follow my training schedule, you can run the same number of miles I am. I've incorporated races as part of the training schedule because I think races are great training tools. You get the energy of running with many other runners, there's aid stations along the way and you force yourself to run faster and harder than you would if you were out doing a regular long run. I would also like to throw in a few 10K races as tempo runs but it was hard to find 10Ks this far in advance, so the schedule may be altered as we go along (like running a 10K on Saturday and then doing the long run on Sunday - which is supposed to be great for training because you have to do a long run while slightly fatigued). I tried to incorporate the ESR Saturday morning runs whenever possible, but some locations are hard to do a lot of miles at (like a 20 miler at the Watershed or running the Medina loop over and over are a bit trying).

Long Runs 2010.doc (41.50 kb)

I made an executive decision and our 2010 fall group marathon trip will be the Las Vegas Rock & Roll Marathon (or half marathon) on December 5th. In 2009 we had 2 group race trips; Lake Chelan and Portland. In 2008 we went to Victoria, BC.

In case you have any friends who are beginning runners (or not used to long distances) I'm going to be pacing some first-timers at the Seattle R&R half marathon. Let me know if anybody wants to join me. I'm not sure what pace we'll be running, but it will probably be between 10:00-12:00 minute miles (depends how trained the participants are by June - could be even slower).

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