Thursday 15 April 2010

Volcanos

Well, it seems, fingers crossed, the volcano will not stop me making the trip to Boston. As the final post before the race I thought I would do a brief outline of the training for Boston.

In the ninety days before Boston I completed 660.26 miles; the corresponding figure for Dublin was 511.25. The highest weekly mileage total was seventy-one.

I have completed three marathon paced runs of twelve, fourteen, and ten miles at MP respectively. I thought I had completed more and must have missed one or two in the schedule. In the next training cycle I will complete a MP run every other week and would aim to do at least twice this number. The dearth of MP runs is something that concerns me a little.

I have completed at least nine runs of 15.5 miles or more, topping out at twenty-two miles.

One significant difference between the Pfitzinger & Douglas up to fifty-five miles and the seventy miles programme is the length of the midweek runs and I am hoping this has very significantly increased my endurance.

Also, in this cycle I did strengthening work, concentrating on my quads and hamstrings, with simple weight bearing lunges and squats. Unfortunately I did not do this as regularly as I would have liked, but that I did any at all is a significant departure that I am hoping it will stand to me when I hit the Newton Hills.

If I can put in a similar performance to Thomas and Grellan in their recent Connemarathon Ultra I shall be very happy. Well done to them.

4 comments:

Thomas said...

Good Luck! Both in getting on a plane across the pond and especially for the marathon.

Learn from my mistake last year and don't start too fast!

Gary said...

Very best of luck with getting over the first hurdle (getting the flight in our ash-ridden skies). The rest will be easy!

bricey said...

I hope the flight gets off. Best of luck in Boston

Grellan said...

Glad to see that you avoided the volcanic ash Westley. Great result for a tough course. Looks like the hills over the second half didn't take too much out of you. Recover well. Looking forward to the report.