Getting Serious Now!

It's a week after the first ever Spartan Military Sprint and I am jonesing for the next challenge.  Since I am now a member of Team Beef, I have decided to start training for the Denver Rock & Roll Marathon.  The only problem is, despite having completed the Spartan race (slowly), I feel like on a fitness scale of 1 to 10, I am about a 2.  Realistically to start training for a marathon I feel you should be starting at about a 5, and fitness is not something you can fake or put in extra time to catch up on.  As I found out last year, it's all about time on your feet, and you cannot rush that piece or you risk an over training injury.  It breaks down like this: the less trained you are, the more likely you can over train, and hence the more likely you are to get an over training injury.  So the simple task is to train as hard as you can and not any more.  Easy, right?

Last year, I trained somewhat sporadically, often following a mish mash of training plans, including the Runner's World 'three day a week' training plan.  I skipped more training sessions than I should have, and about a month before my race I developed plantar fasciitis, so my remaining training time was limited.  In the end, like the Spartan race, I finished but it was not painless.  In fact, my knees hurt so bad after the first 16 miles of downhill that I didn't run much for the remainder of the year.

I started this year with some hit or miss running, but with no specific goals in front of me, I haven't been exactly focused.  My training for the Spartan Race was 3 running sessions with burpees mixed in and a day where I did 240 pushups in 48 minutes.  Looking back on that, it's a miracle I finished the race.

So the question is, what am I going to do differently this time?  For one thing, I have the power of the iPad.  I have an app called 26.2 that has mapped out a plan for me based on my parameters - race date of September 22nd, training plan = beginner, goal time is 4 hours 30 minutes.  Hit save and BOOM - your own marathon plan.  It's heavy on running - 4 days per week - but light on mileage to start.  One day is dedicated to strength and core, and another day is blocked for cross training.  In my corner for both of those off days - Spartan workouts.  Strength, core and cross training are key components of the Spartan plan.  With these weapons at my disposal, I can't help but succeed.

Oh, yeah, there's the little thing called actually DOING the work...

...to be continued.