Boston Plan

If you plan to run the Boston Marathon, you need to check out this spreadsheet. After our Warhurst workout this morning, I talked to Steve about my race plan for Boston. It is time to run a good race so I took his advice, mixed in a little Geezer juice and came up with "The Plan".

The Goal: Run a sub 3:10 marathon with the opportunity to run significantly below 3:10 if the day is good.

The Plan: Plug in the 3:10 goal time into the above spreadsheet. Select fairly even pacing strategy with a medium fade.

Phase I: Run 15 miles at the resulting paces. Average pace 7:12 cumulative time 1:47:58.

Phase II: Drop the pace to 7:00 for the Newton Hills miles 16-20. Average pace 7:08 cumulative time 2:29:58.

Phase III: Drop the pace to whatever I have left to the finish. I will try for a 6:45 pace to the finish. If I can manage that, the average pace will be 7:04 with a final marathon time of 3:05:09ish.

So where is the sub 3 hour plan? After a post Boston recovery period, I plan to resume my high mileage base running of 80+ miles per week. The only change will be to push my daily paces down by 10-15 seconds per mile. Ruth Anne is hoping to train for and run a Boston qualifying time in 2009. We have reviewed the 2009 fall marathons and have selected 2 potential races that meet her and my goals. We are going to enter the St. George lottery as a team. If we are successful, the advantage is that we would train with Team Rogue for peaking on the same weekend as the most likely team race. If we are not successful, we would likely select the Midsouth Championship Marathon in Wynne Ark in early November. We have run this race before and look forward to running this very well run small town marathon again.