Boston 2015 Global Period (Training 11/17-2/1)

Yikes! It's been 11 weeks or so since I last recapped on the blog. That's actually probably a good thing as I've been busy running and doing other things for the most part.

A shot from the Daniel Burnham Open cross country race Lee Greenberg and I produce.

(photo credit: Ground Up Dij)

In summary, the past 11 weeks, I've averaged about 70 miles per week, implemented hip/core strengthening, and done a number of workouts featuring faster paces/shorter reps. You can check out the details on Strava.

I had to nix my goal of racing at the Illiana Invite (as it is an invitation only event, duh), but it seems I've also gotten a bunch of other runners interested in racing on the (indoor) track at some point in February so that's cool. It looks like we'll be running 5000m on Saturday, February 2nd.

My feeling is that even with the progress I've made with stabilizing the chassis and getting the legs turning over with workouts featuring shorter, faster repeats, I'm still lacking a certain "something." That "something" could very well be just getting in a race or time trial so it's a good thing that it looks like there will probably be a few opportunities to race indoors this year.

Looking ahead, my training will start to become increasingly (Boston) marathon specific. This past weekend was the first Boston 365 workout in Barrington, IL which features rolling terrain and is one of the spots Chicago-area runners use to prepare for the Boston Marathon.

We tried something a bit different this latest outing, running out and back on "Windmill Hill" segment twice before flipping around for home.

The very steep second half of "Windmill Hill" provided some great downhill running stimulus.

I focused on running marathon effort (at this point about 6:00 pace) for these hills. After a gentle mile back on the roads, I ran 6 miles at marathon effort (again just over 6:00 pace). I think this was quite valuable as it gave me the opportunity to run marathon effort after some hard downhill running. Kudos to Boston Marathon Guru, Dan Daly for dreaming up this new training stimulus.

I'll have to post more specific goals and plans for the next six weeks or so, but the main thing is to begin making that transition to marathon specific workouts in preparation for a few key workouts like my staple 18 miles at 95% marathon goal pace.

What do your next six weeks look like?

Leave a question or comment below!