Training

As some of you know, I was chosen to run in the NYC half-marathon on March 21st. While this sounds like quite an honor, let me assure you that my selection had nothing to do with me personally; rather, there are a limited number of spaces and without a qualifying time (which I don't have because I've never run a half-marathon) I had to enter a lottery. Happily, my name was randomly chosen, and so I've started to prepare myself for the 13.1-mile race through Manhattan. (And no, I don't know the route yet - it's not posted - but I'll put up a link once I find out.)

A half-marathon isn't really that big a deal. I'm fairly sure I could do it tomorrow if necessary, although I would probably feel pretty awful for the last two miles and end up with a terrible time. So my goal is not simply to finish but to finish it strongly. At this point, I'm hoping for sub-ten minute miles, meaning that I should finish in less than two hours and ten minutes. Not terribly fast, but for a race that long, I think it's a reasonable challenge.

Initially, I decided to prepare for the race by running every day, trying to put in between 6 and 8 miles each time. Then, thanks to a workout with a local running club called the New York Harriers, I realized that I wasn't doing myself any favors by neglecting speed work*, so I added a day or two per week of that to the regimen. In a recent online search, however - whatever did we do without Google? - I learned that, yet again, I was going about it all wrong. Running every day may sound admirable, but it's actually not recommended, nor is going long distances each time. One of the sample training schedules I saw suggested going between three and six miles most days, with one long run each week. While the point about rest days is well taken (I had my first one yesterday and it was lovely), on the days I don't do speed work I plan to put in at least six.

I discussed all of this with an acquaintance of mine over the weekend. He's a runner too, and his first question was whether I planned to do a marathon. Absolutely not. Of course, I say this now, and we'll see how I feel after doing this race. But while doing more half-marathons after I finish this one sounds like fun, a full marathon doesn't really appeal to me. More than anything, I'm not willing to put in the time it takes to train for one. The 20+ mile workouts one is supposed to do in the weeks leading up to a marathon take ages, and you have to devote hours of your day to them instead of the roughly 1.5 hours a day I'm putting in now. So no promises that I won't change my mind, but for the record, currently a marathon is not on the agenda.

*For those of you who are not runners, the focus of speed work is (surprise!) speed rather than distance. On a very basic level, there are two ways one can do this: either fast intervals of a pre-determined duration, or fast intervals of a pre-determined distance. In high school, we did a lot of distance intervals because we ran on a track and it was easy to measure them. One of my favorite workouts was called a ladder. You ran 200m, jogged 200m, ran 300, jogged 300, ran 400, jogged 400... you get the idea. And of course, as with a real ladder, you have to come back down, so after you go your maximum distance, you start to do shorter and shorter intervals until you're back to doing 200s again. Alas, I have no track at my disposal, so I'm doing very simple timed intervals. Using a stopwatch, I run hard for a set period of time, then jog for about half the number of minutes, then run again for a slightly shorter period, then jog again, etc. Very good for strength training and cardiovascular capacity. The other bonus: I can get in an excellent workout in about 40 minutes from beginning to end instead of at least double that time on my distance days.