running log

[arguchik]

ran 3 today. it felt wonderful--yay, new shoes!

i'm changing my plan for the week. i busted out my seattle street map to measure out a 3 mile course for myself, and in the process i realized that it's only a teensy bit further than i've already been running on a daily basis, so instead of lengthening 2 runs by half a mile each this week, i'm simply going to lengthen all of my runs to the full 3 miles. next week i'm going to lengthen 2 of my runs to 3.5 miles; the following week i'll lengthen all of them to 3.5 miles; and the week after that i'll keep everything at 3.5 miles. then i'll spend 2-3 weeks getting myself to 4 mile runs.

that's the pattern that has always worked pretty well for me in the past when i'm increasing mileage: increase by about 10% per week for 2 weeks, and in the 3rd week don't increase at all. at the first sign of trouble (i.e. patellar or hamstring tendon pain, plantar fascia pain--for some reason whenever i get running overuse injuries it's always in my tendons): reduce mileage and rehab immediately! i kind of learned this from the marathon training book i used when i ran the vermont city marathon in 2000; that and from several active years subscribed to the dead runner's society listserv (their motto: carpe viam!), listening to all of the fast people talk shop.

speaking of marathons...i'm thinking that if i can build a good mileage base by late january, i might be in a good position to train for the vancouver marathon. i'm not ready to commit to it just yet, but by the end of january i'll know. that would be a nice 40th birthday present to give myself.