A slight change of plans

I have decided to make a slight alteration to my spring plans.  Originally, I wanted to break 16:00 in the 5K this spring, and then enjoy a semi-retirement from logging all sorts of miles and crushing workouts.  Ashlie and I planned on ticking a few states off in our quest to run a marathon in each of the 50 states, notably North Carolina with the Tobacco Road Marathon, and Colorado with the Colfax Denver Marathon.  I planned to run these like I ran New Orleans; as a long run, and not try to race them.

However, I recently learned that I somehow achieved elite entry into both of these races.  This accomplished two things.  One, it made me want to be competitive in what I think is my best event again.  Two, it made me feel guilty to think about accepting a free entry to a race and then just jog it. So, I have decided to race the Colfax marathon in May.  However, I am going to train for it a little differently than my previous marathons.

My number one priority is still breaking 16 minutes this spring.  That means I need to do a lot of speedwork, around 5-minute pace or faster.  While I hope to run this time sooner rather than later this year, I still don’t have the time to recover from 5K training, build up to typical marathon mileage and workouts, and race the marathon.  So, I am going to continue 5K training, and just do a bunch of long runs.  No marathon specific workouts.  This technique worked pretty well for my friend Dave for his debut, which he won, despite not running a single long run over 17 miles and doing mostly intense track work.  I’m not expecting a PR, but I think I can still run a decent marathon with this type of training.  We will find out in May!