Did you get picked for the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon at Grandma’s for June 16th? Did you get picked for the Garry Bjorklund Half Marathon at Gr

I have received notices that even before anyone has received an email this week congratulating them on being selected in the lottery for the GB Half Marathon, that some entrants have received an email from the credit card company letting them know about their payment being processed. If you can’t remember the email you used during registration, you can check with your credit card company for a charge from “MarathonGuide.com / Web Marketing Associates” for $80.40. If you have been charged, then you’re in.

All runners chosen (and even those not chosen) will receive an email this week (February 27th) letting them know if they are in or out. Good Luck to everyone that entered.

Week Nine of Half Marathon Training

Alright, you just got an easy week, time to get back to endurance training.

Week Nine program:

Sunday, Friday - off
Monday, 5 mile Easy Run (under 70% HRM)
Tuesday, Thursday - 4 miles easy (under 70% HRM)
Wednesday - 7 miles Tempo (80-88% HRM) This you will do by warming up one mile under 70% MHR, then alternate between 2 minutes under 70% HRM and 10 minutes 80-88%, then again between 2 minutes under 70% HRM and 10 minutes 80-88%of your HRM, etc., to a distance of 6.5 miles and then a half mile cool down.
Saturday - 12 miles (under 70% first 8 miles, 70-80% last two miles)

You have now built up to 10 minutes for a Tempo Workout.

Training for a Half Marathon and a Marathon….at the same time.

Received a question that I'm sure a lot of runners get to sometime in their running careers. If I'm training for a Half Marathon and an excellent opportunity comes up to run a marathon within a couple of months after the Half Marathon race, what should I so to change my training to do both?

Maybe this question seems timely because that happened to me in the last two weeks. After finding out that I [and my family in Team Beaver] did not get chosen in Garry Bjorklund's Half Marathon [Grandma's Half Marathon] lottery, I decided to run the Full Marathon. Okay, that's a heck of a change I know, but Duluth, Minnesota does put on a great show and Grandma's Marathon is on Top 25 Marathons on a number of lists.

Since I was already training for Get-In-Gear's Half Marathon on April 30^th, I figured it was a good base anyway. Those of you following my Half Marathon program for it, know that we are putting in a number of ten mile plus runs leading up to the actual Half Marathon race.

FIRST, a disclaimer: From doing past Half Marathon and full Marathon training, here's my hard warning. These are two different race efforts with two different training plans. I would not encourage any of you that are training for your first half Marathon to attempt this for your first marathon. All others read on.

I'm a believer that you pick a race distance and train for it. So just because I'm running Grandma's, I'm not going to change my weekly [Mon-Fri] runs. What I change is the long runs. For example, my longest run before I signed up for Grandma's was two hours. So for the long run I had planned two weeks later, I add 20 minutes, the next one two weeks later another 20 minutes, and so on. That way I don't screw up my speed for the Half Marathon in April while building a base for the marathon in June. It just so happens that April 30^th I was scheduled for a 17-18 miler. So I will do the Half Marathon hard and recover with a very, very slow jog/walk. If it ends up being just 15-16 instead of the 17, I'm not worried about it. The Half Marathon fast is equal to a 15-16 miler slow or easy.

Hope this helps you plan appropriately. If you need any help in creating your own running plan in this area, you all know you can contact me at marathonmadman@gmail.com for additional questions.

Surviving Week One of Half Marathon Training

Hopefully if you are reading this, you've completed your Saturday Long Run and are looking forward to a day off tomorrow.

The long run usually is the one run that gets runners to a point of realizing that not only can they complete the Half Marathon Planned in the future but also run it for a predicted time. You probably noticed that your last two miles, in which I had you step up the pace a bit, gave you a sense of whether you are an endurance runner or a speed runner. If you felt like you could've gone faster, keep that thought, as later long runs in the coming week are going to test it. If you felt like you couldn't set it up, that was your body telling you that you may not be built for endurance. Don't let that bother you, all runners have good and bad long runs. This program will get you over the bad ones.

So now to next week's program. I'm not going to give you day-by-day instructions like I did this past week. Hopefully you can just go back over the past blog entries for any refresher information that you need. But here's the mileage plan for the coming days:

Sunday, Friday - off
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday - 4 miles easy (under 70% HRM)
Wednesday - 5 miles Speed (90-100% HRM) This you will do by warming up one mile under 70% MHR, then alternate between ¼ mile 90-100% of your MHR and ¼ mile walking or slight jog 7 times, and then a half mile cool down.
Saturday - 9 miles (under 70% first 7 miles, 70-80% last two miles)

You may be already noticing some changes in you first week. For any of you that have been over-training, some extra energy. You might actually feel by the end of the week that you wonder if you are going fast enough because you only do a Tempo/Speed once a week. Believe me, this is enough to get you where you need to be. As I written about in the past, Half Marathoners only need 5%, at the most 10%, of their total running distance with speed exceeding an Easy run speed. Runners do have a problem with this concept as a lot of them believe "More is Better". But again, my advice is that you show up to the starting line uninjured and ready to give it your best effort.

Week One of 12 Week Half Marathon Plan

Alright, here is the Half Marathon Plan in a nutshell. You will run 5 days a week. Sunday and Friday you have off (how great is a plan that starts you off with a day off?!). Monday, Tuesday, Thursday are easy days (my defintion of easy might be different than yours if you are beginning runner, but they will become easier as you acclimate to the training). Wedenesday is a Tempo or Speed Workout. Saturday is your long run.

A couple of items to point out. Your easy and long run days are run at 70% of your HRM (see yesterdays blog on how to figure this out if you need a reference point). But I want to stress that while reaching this running might seem easy, stayin below it will be the real challenge. If you are a Type A (like I am) when it comes to training, it is very difficult to not go above that number. But I ask you to please follow this for the 12 weeks and see if it doesn't make a difference in your Half Marathon results.

To give you a personal example of the struggle, after running the Walt Disney Marathon four weeks ago, I gave myself a couple of weeks to receover and then got back on the treadmill. I set the speed to a 10:32 minutes per mile (5.7 on the treadmill). I felt I needed this to slowly get back into training. After a mile and a half, I couldn't keep my heart rate under 146 if my life depended on it. Every couple of minutes, I would lower it... 5.6, 5.5, 5.4, 5.3, etc. until I finally got down to 4.8 (that's a pedestrian 12:30 minutes per mile!). I wasn't crazy about running that slow (my average pace is usually a 10:30 in easy training) but I knew the run would be worthless if I didn't keep my HR to under 146.

So what caused me to be so out of shape? Well, it could be I took too long off from training or made it too easy the last couple of weeks. Could be me getting older. Could be the pounds I picked up on the vacation that we took in Hawaii. The point is that they body doesn't lie. You can lie to yourself but you must train in the right heart rate zones or you will never truly get better in future training. You need to check the ego at the door going into the health club before going in. It's better to train smart than just train.

The good news, is that from running for over 25 years, I have learned that my heart rate average will get better. I know that soon, as the pounds melt off, my body gets back into training mode. Soon, I will be back closer on my easy days to the 10:30 mpm that I was running a couple of months ago. The key is patience and persistence. I know that this will be hard for a lot of you (as it is for me) but remember my goal is to keep you running. And if you don't follow the under 70% rule for you easy/long runs, you will not run your potential. You will either injure yourself or show up to your half marathon tired on race day.

So here's the first week's plan:
Sunday, Friday - off
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday - 4 miles easy (under 70% HRM)
Wednesday - 5 miles Tempo (80-88% HRM)
Saturday - 9 miles (under 70% first 7 miles, 70-80% last two miles)

-I will check in during the week with more on the Tempo run and Long run descriptions.

Getting Ready for a Spring Half Marathon

I'm already registered for a spring Half Marathon and want to give my readers a great running plan in case any of you are planning to run one in the next months. The plan I'll lay out will cover a 12 week period. This plan is tied to Heart Rate Running, so if you need a refresher on how to determine your heart rate percentages, please read over my earlier articles.

This is a very simple plan. Each Sunday, starting tomorrow, I will give you that week's plan. The week I'm setting is from Sunday through Saturday. This doesn't have to be those days, you can adjust accordingly, but follow the basic tenets of the plan if you want to use it successfully.

There are five running days a week. Saturday is the long run. Wednesday is reserved for either a Tempo Run or Speed Workout. You will note that about every 3rd or 4th week, I back off of mileage for the week as well as each day's mileage. That is to help you recover for the training stresses that your body will be going through.

Before I send out next week's plan tomorrow, I ask that you find the following heart rate ranges for all three workouts - Easy/everyday and Long Runs (less than 70% HRM), Tempo (80-88% of HRM) and Speed ( 90-100% HRM). Remember, the HRM (Heart Rate Max) is the following formula = (Max Heart Rate - Resting Heart Rate (difference) x percent + Resting Heart Rate.

Just a quick example to help you. My heart rate max is 185 beats per minute. My resting heart rate is 55. So the difference is 130 beats per minute. So my everyday rate would be 146, determined by 130 x 70% = 91 plus 55 = 146. For Tempo, it ends up being between 159-169 and Speed 172-185.

This means that I won't let my heart rate go over 146 in my easy runs and most of my long run (there is something that I add to the long run different than what you see in other plans but I will share that with you later).

This plan can be used by essentially everyone, beginner, veteran or expert. I can't guarantee your fastest PR (Personal Record) race(no one can), but you will run it at your best potential if you follow this plan. I've used it to run a 2:00 marathon last year when my best Half Marathon to date was a 2:08. So I'm not promising to take 30 minutes off your last Half Marathon, but it could take almost 7% off your last Half Marathon time.

Look for the first week's running plan tomorrow.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Winning a Running Lottery…

My wife Bonnie and I found out this week that we were selected in the lottery for the Gary Bjorklund's Half Marathon in Duluth this June. I believe this is most perfect Half Marathon in the country. I may be biased being a Minnesotan, but it truly is. Starts at 6:30 am, it is mostly on a downhill course, that gets you to the finish by 9 am, with enough time to shower before the Marathon winners show up at 9:40 and after (the Marathon starts an hour later 13.1 miles down the same course route).

I like the lottery format that has been adjusted in the past few years that allows for a 'group' to register instead of solo entries only. In that format, you and your friends/family register as a group instead of as individuals. If one of your entries is selected, the whole group gets in. If none of you are selected, none of you get in. When traveling 2 plus hours to an event with an overnight stay, it's a lot better to know you are all going to get in instead of a select few. Makes it more rewarding as a group event.

Bonnie and I have also entered the New York City Marathon Lottery, but there was no 'group' option. That will be disappointing for one of us if either of us is selected, but not both and/or neither. I believe that all running lotteries should incorporate the group option as a way of making it more of a running community event.

Overall, these lotteries have been good to me. I haven't always been selected but the important ones I can't remember missing out on.

My claim to fame, and without a doubt the hardest to be selected on, has been winning the Boston Marathon Lottery in 1996. As a promo to the 100^th running of Boston, they allowed all interested runners to apply for a one time lottery that would select 5000 runners. The rules were that you had to finish in 6 hours or less, understand that the entry could not be deferred or transferred, and if you qualified by meeting the time goal (between the selection date in July, 1995 and March, 1996) you had to surrender the entry for a qualified number.

Some runners might look at running Boston as a Lottery winner vs. as a qualifier as a letdown. Considering that the odds of me actually qualifying for it, (would have to run a qualifying marathon in 3:35 or less these days), the only chance I had of running this in my lifetime was getting picked in that lottery. And running it on its 100^th birthday was something my grand kids and great grand kids can say about their grandfather.

That's not to say I've ever given up qualifying for the Boston Marathon. As anyone that tracks the qualifying times, my odds of qualifying for it will vastly improve starting September 25^th of this year. That's when my qualifying time will change to 3 hours and 45 minutes. Still a stretch, but not impossible. And like the lottery itself, as long as there is a chance, there is hope…..