My big goal race for the early fall was the Chicago Marathon, and that’s now in the rearview mirror. My recovery has been going well, and now it’s time to start looking ahead.
Like any good, crazy runner, I’ve always got another race on the calendar before the first one is run and done. My next big goal race is the Fred Lebow Half in January, followed by the Jersey City Marathon in April.
But in the meantime, I’m going to drop down to some shorter distances and see if I can improve my speed a bit. Over the next five weeks, I’ll be incorporating some faster intervals into my training and knocking out four races.
Here’s a run down on the races – and my approach to training.
The Race Calendar For This Fall
I’ve got four races marked on my calendar for this fall. I may add a trail 10k in there, too, but if I do it’ll be at an easy effort for fun.
The first race up is the Giralda Farms 10k on November 10. This is the USATF-NJ Masters Men Team Championship. This is early in my transition from Chicago, so I’m not going to be focused on a PR here. But the weather should be good, and I want to use this to see where I’m at. I’ll take it mostly by feel and just see how things go.
Next up is the Last Chance 8k XC Championship on November 17. After knocking the rust off my legs at Giralda Farms, I’m going to approach this race a little more seriously. It’s a flat course, so I won’t have to worry too much about hills. But still, cross country races aren’t good time barometers. So I’ll be focused on finishing strong and placing well – not necessarily on my time.
The big goal race is the Ashenfelter 8k on Thanksgiving. It’s a week and a half after the 8k cross country race, so I’ll have plenty of time to recover and hopefully get in a decent workout, as well. This is a somewhat hilly course, but it’s nothing crazy, and I finished it in 31:52 last year.
It’s also a big race with a deep field. I was 129/1,370 among men last year, and 29/231 for men 40-44. I don’t think I’ve quite got it in me to break 30:00 – at least not without a longer runway for this shorter distance training – so my goal is to dip under 31:00 and move up a few positions in the rankings. The top 100 finishers get a coffee mug, and last year that was ~30:45. So we’ll see.
Finally, I’ll wrap things up with the Rutgers Big Chill 5k on December 14. As an alum, I love going back to Rutgers and running on Campus. I’ve done this race a bunch of times over the years, and it’s my current 5k PR (19:28).
I know I’m in better shape than that, and I’ll have a little over two weeks between Ashenfelter and the Big Chill. I’ll dial in a goal pace when I get closer, but I’m pretty confident I can finish under 19:00. The question is how far under. There are also some serious hills in the final mile, and they beat me up last year. So I’m also keen on finishing strong – and not fading away in Buccleuch Park.
The (Brief) Training Plan
Now that I put pen to paper, I realized just how little time I have. So there isn’t a whole lot of time for training. Really, I’m going to be banking on the mileage I put in during marathon training and hoping to squeeze some juice out with a few good workouts and some lighter weeks.
I’ve been running 70+ miles per week most of the year, but I’m going to dial that back to ~60 miles per week for the next two months. On weeks when I’m not racing on Sunday, I’ll run 14-16 miles for my long run.
I’m going to make it to the Wednesday track workout the first week, and after that I’ll be doing my own workouts. Depending on if I have a race in a particular week or not, I’ll try to fit in one or two workouts.
One workout will be I focused – longer intervals at around 5k pace. The other workout will be R intervals – shorter, faster intervals at about mile pace. I especially want to get in one or two of those R workouts to see how fast I can do 400m repeats.
I’ll probably get in one workout the week of 11/10, two workouts the week of 11/17, no workouts the week of 11/24 (due to the Ashenfelter race), and two workouts the week of 12/1.
The Rutgers Big Chill is at the end of the week of 12/8, so I’ll probably do a lighter workout at the beginning of that week on Tuesday.
The Big Picture and Rolling Through
As I thought about this some more, this is really the first part in a three-part training block.
I’ve got three big goals over the next few months – the Rutgers 5k (mid-December), the NYRR Half (late January) and the Jersey City Marathon (mid-April).
This first few weeks, I’ll focus on speed, and then I’ll take a week off to recover following the 5k.
That’ll leave me five weeks until the Fred Lebow Half – which is enough to get in a decent amount of training. I’ll keep the mileage between 60-70mpw, and shift the focus to I and T running. After the race, I’ll take another week of easy running to recover.
That then leaves me ten weeks until the Jersey City Marathon. The last two weeks, I’ll be tapering, so I’ll have 8 weeks to bump my mileage a little and focus on long runs and marathon pace workouts. Once I see the spring racing schedule, I’ll probably throw a tune up race in there, as well – likely the Spring Distance Classic in March.
I’ll flesh out the weeks leading up to Fred Lebow and Jersey City during each of the recovery weeks. But I think that larger plan makes sense. I’ll be able to work on my speed a little through these fall races and through the training for Fred Lebow. And then I can shift gears back to marathon training in time for Jersey City.
As usual, check back for weekly updates if you want to keep up with how I’m doing.