happy national running day!

I am running my fourth marathon on Saturday!  And, for the first time, I signed up for McMillan Pro (at a whopping $1.99/month) and started following a real training program.

For those who are not familiar with McMillan Running, it is a website run by Greg McMillan who is both a running coach and exercise physiologist.  He provides explanations, both from a coach's standpoint and a physiological standpoint, justifying all of the workouts he recommends.  So, as a sucker for anything backed by scientific evidence, I totally bought into his program.

After signing up, I had a little chat with Greg (well, technically, I read a blog post he wrote, but it felt like we were talking) during which he said that most runners have PR's slower than what they are capable because they only set goals that they know they are capable of accomplishing.  So he recommended setting a goal that I may or may not be able to achieve.  So I decided I was going to try to run a sub-3:30 marathon.  Maybe a little extreme, considering my current PR is 3:55, so I will have to run this race almost a full minute-per-mile faster than my last marathon (which was only 12 weeks ago), but I am going to give it my best shot.  I figure the worst that can happen is that I don't finish in under 3:30.  And having a real goal made my training so much more fun.  (Actually now that I think about it, actually training for real made training so much more fun.)

Some of the highlights from my training:

• After only 2 months, my tempo pace (the pace at which you can race for 1 hour) dropped from 7:45/mile to 7:15/mile.  Tempo runs are probably my favorite workout of all time.
• I finally understand why people wipe down the treadmill after their workout, since I do actual workouts on the treadmill now.
• I have learned to LOVE treadmill running.  Not for every day, and definitely not for long runs, but speed workouts are awesome.
• I ran Yasso 800's a couple of weeks ago.  (Yasso 800 is a workout developed by Bart Yasso, editor of Runner's World.  According to him, a workout of 10 x 800 m with a 400m jog between sets can predict the marathon time you are capable of.  If you can do all 10 800's at 4:00-minutes each, you are physically ready for a marathon at a 4:00-hour pace.  If you can do them all at 3:30-minutes each, you are ready for a 3:30-hour marathon.)  I finished all ten at just under 3:30-minutes.