Seven: the time table

I really want to run today.  My Achilles feels pretty good.  I am walking around this AM trying to determine if there is any pain in there whatsoever.  I can’t feel anything but when I think about a single body part with that much focus I almost feel as if it is our programming to feel something.

I probably won’t though, as I will look to take recent advice from my friend who stated something like, “once you think it is healed, take more time off.”  There is still a little blistering under the scar on the left foot, so that ought to be enough to give me pause.  Typically it wouldn’t.   I’d feel compelled to run because I enjoy it.  I’d feel compelled to run because I had to because I only had so much time and I did not want to waste it.

There are 123 days until Pikes.  Or 17.5 weeks.  Look up marathon plan out there and nearly all of them are 20 week plans, maybe more.  Sure, there might be a few that are less, but I have felt that Pikes, with its distance, altitude, 7800’ of up, 7800’ of down required every single one of those days.  And probably not just 20 weeks but 36.  Or more.

It probably didn’t help that I heard stories of guys like an out of shape and overweight Scott Elliott.  He was watching the PPA one year and saw Jeremy Wright win in 2:18.  He had not run the race in four years but je believed “that winning time is too slow” and took the whip to himself everyday for the next year.  He took second behind Jeremy the following year, and won the race over Jeremy the following year.

Or similarly, Matt Carpenter, feeling the sting of a loss to Ricardo Meija in 92, trained insanely for the next year to come back and set a ridiculous course record.

And so I let this belief that I needed every second of training, the time table, and the subsequent plan set up my training and how I approached fitness.  In such and such period prior to the race, I was bound to some training that the time table and the belief led me to.  Then when that time period changed, I shifted the training to the next expected phase.  Base, hill training, effort specific runs over hill and dale, taper and race. 

If done right, it can work.  But for the most part is the body really does not give a crap about a time table.  Your quads have no idea that you have a race in 123 days.  Maybe you would benefit from continuing your base phase longer than what your schedule or time table says.  Maybe you have started to plateau with aerobic training 20 weeks out.   Or maybe you get hurt 123 days out from the race.

I need to progress my fitness from where I am, not where I want to be or where I think I ought to be based on the calendar.  There is no calendar that my heart and lungs have any awareness of.  They have some capability now.  I can look to maximize that capability and improve it today, tomorrow, but there is no thought as to what they can do in 17 weeks.  I can tailor and tweak that to some extent to some race date and time table, but I should not let the calendar drive it.  Instead I need to progress my fitness in a way that is logical to the stepping stone I am standing at.  Blanket subscription to a plan to could mean moving forward in a way that is not considerate of what I really could benefit from.

The challenge here of course is the mental clinging that I have to be of my best fitness come that race day in August.  The need becomes then to change that thinking to getting to my best fitness whenever that comes – and making that the goal.  The rest will fit in appropriately.

By the way, it is crazy that five guys broke four hours in 93.