A fitful night’s sleep last night… I was up at one, three and five worrying about the twins, running, work… the whole shebang and then realised that while I’m getting closer to my goal of running every day for a year, I have totally neglected that six weeks after I finish, I am running the Athens Marathon and have done no marathon-specific training for it.
A quick visit to the Runner’s World website put that right though and I devised a program to take me through the 13 weeks left to the race itself.
The good thing about the RW programs is that if you have a Garmin watch, you can download the routines to it and when out on a training run, it will tell you whether you need to speed up or slow down. I want to beat my previous marathon time in Athens, despite it allegedly being a tough course, so I have aimed for a program to get me over the finish line in 3 hours 45 mins.
This morning’s routine had me doing 0.5mile speed splits. Basically, you run a mile to warm up, run half a mile at well above race pace, do 0.12 of a mile slowly to recover and then go again – six times. By the time I got back I was sweating even more than I usually do, but I’m pleased to get the first training session out of the way – plus I passed 1,300 miles into the bargain.
Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run
Miles today: 5.40
Target: 954
Miles to date: 1,301.05
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here
4 comments
Irene says:
August 3, 2010 at 10:36 (UTC 1)
Congrats! And good luck with the Athens Marathon. I just signed up for the Royal Parks Half – hoping to beat my PB this time around.
offthelongrun says:
August 3, 2010 at 10:54 (UTC 1)
Hi,
Great effort and good luck for Athens. One question ( I also have a Garmin) I noticed you have 3 sets of splits: 1m, 0.5m and 0.12m -how did you set that up on the watch, or did you do it manually?
Thanks
worldofjames says:
August 3, 2010 at 11:01 (UTC 1)
Hi there and thanks!
If you go to Runner’s World website and look for the training section, you can choose Garmin ready programs according to the time you want to achieve in a variety of race distances.
Say you want to do a 10k in 10 weeks, find the 10k programs, choose your target time and add the date of the race.
It will generate a file with the extension .wkt.
Open the Garmin Training Center application, go to File>import and import the .wkt file you have just created.
It will load up all the workouts needed and place the relevant ones on the relevant dates for your training program.
Next, go to Device and click on Send To Device, it will upload the schedules on your watch.
When you crank the watch up to start a run it will say
“Start today’s workout” Click ok and off you go!
offthelongrun says:
August 3, 2010 at 11:16 (UTC 1)
Thanks heaps – this isn’t available on the Australian site – only the UK – and it doesn’t say it’s compatible with the 310 – I’ll try it and see.
Alex