The End of Recovery. The Start of Marathon Training.

It's finally here! I am 18-weeks out from what will be my second marathon and I am staring in the face of a real marathon training plan for the first time. Although Pete Pfitzinger has thrown a small wrench into the spokes of my nicely crafted Excel spreadsheet I am moving forward. More on that little hiccup later, but first the end of my "Recovery" period...

On Saturday I ran a nice easy 6km recovery jog early in the morning as I knew the rest of the day would be packed with activities. Boy was I right! First, coaching Malcolm's baseball game at 9am. Then escorting the entire team for their snacks of hot dogs and such as a courtesy of the league before heading home to prep for our journey downtown to the Blue Jays game (wherein we sat through a Red Sox thrashing, but did get to see an infielder, Mike McCoy, come in to pitch a scoreless 9th marking only the fifth time in team history that a non-pitcher was used in this role, so that was kind of cool).

After the game we walked around downtown and I picked up the second edition of Pete Pfitzinger's book Advanced Marathoning (more foreshadowing to the aforementioned wrench in the spokes). To cap off the day we all went out for a great Indian food dinner at a nice restaurant before dragging our tired butts back home.

On Sunday morning I went out for my last run prior to starting marathon training and just wanted to have fun and not care about pace. It was largely successful as the weather was perfect, cool and still, and I managed to just run the 16.5km on feel. I incorporated some of the now familiar hills in the Beaches, but they were not all that taxing. I remain committed to including hills in my running at the cost of slower average pace for the sake of variety and to improve my leg strength. We'll see how this will work as I attempt to follow what for me will be a challenging training cycle mileage and intensity wise.

And now onto the Plan...

I had mapped out the 18-week training cycle based on the first (and what I thought was the only) edition of Pfizinger's book. When I picked up the second edition (and the second hyperlink!) this weekend I was surprised to see that things were slightly modified! In what way, you may ask? Well,

• 6 Lactate Threshold runs versus 5
• 7 VO2 Max workouts versus 6
• 5 Marathon Specific Pace runs versus 2

And the first run of the first week, which in the first edition is a General Aerobic + Speed session, has been changed to Lactate Threshold. Right out of the gate they have you hauling ass! Well, I made the changes to my training plan with the exception of that first training run. I am keeping that as General Aerobic + Speed, thank you very much.

The weekly mileage remains similar to the original plan, but the intensity definitely goes up a bit. I think this is good and hope that my body can hold up to both. I'm looking forward to getting going, although I must admit a bit of nervousness. How will the next 18-weeks go for me? Will I be successful in staying healthy and fitting everything in while maintaining my commitments to my family and work? Will I be able to do the tough runs while on vacation out of town during the heaviest mileage and intensity portion of the Plan? And what target pace will fall out of all of this for my actual race - something less than stellar, something that gives me a more than legitimate shot at the World Geezer Record, or (and I'm restraining maniacal laughter as I type this) that illusive BQ, whether the 2012 version (3hr15m) or the 2013 (3hr10m)?

It remains to be seen. Let the journey begin!