The Murphy's Law Training Cycle?

As you may have noticed, it has been quite a while since I've posted here. That is because the marathon training for the Space Coast Marathon has been a bit of a trainwreck and depressed me a bit making me not want to bother with writing. In fact, I never even wrote about signing up for the Space Coast Marathon which will be held in Florida this coming weekend. With the race coming up, I figured I should provide an update on how things went and what my expectations are for the marathon.

First I suppose I'll touch on the good, which was not a whole lot. As you may recall, I was planning two sort of big changes for this training cycle - use of Daniels' Running Formula to construct the workouts and then the use of a 10-day training cycle as opposed to the more typical 7-day cycle. I was only able to stick with my planned workouts for an initial three week period and then briefly for another two week period. That was probably not enough to really judge it, but I thought for the time I used it the trainings were quite effective. For the initial three week period, I was ramping up and felt like I was building the base just as expected. The improvements continued during the next short period. I found the paces and distances were pushing me but were not so far out of reach as to be a disincentive. Bottom line is I'll probably continue to use the Daniels' Running Formula theories and methods to construct my training plans.


The 10-day cycle was a little more circumspect. I ended up having to skip so many sessions I felt like I was never able to get into a good, comfortable cycle with the 10-day plan. I did have a few instances where long runs fell on weeknights. That was not so bad when it was still light outside and the weather was warmer. But as I started to get into fall that got to be a little bit of an issue since I don't like running in the dark (or the cold). So the 10-day cycle goes in the undetermined column and I may give it a try again later.

So what caused all the problems with this training cycle? I apparently did something to my right leg when training for the 10K that has continued to linger. It started out with a tightness that seemed to encircle my lower leg about halfway between the knee and ankle. Some runs it was all the way around, other days it would seem to be on the front outside area, others the front inside area, and other days on the back of my leg in the calf muscle. Eventually over time it seems to have settled in the front inside area very similar to a shin splint. I'm not sure whether it was just some pulled muscles or a very slight stress fracture or what.

Some fartlek training to spice things up.

A couple times the pain got bad enough to change my gait and that would cause me to stop a run and take a several days break. Twice I took 10 day breaks from running. Even when I started back I scaled back on my plans, did not push the pace, and would skip workouts here and there depending on how things felt. Over the last few weeks it seems like slow but steady progress has been made with the healing. The trade-off is my training has really only been just enough to try to maintain a minimal level of fitness. The plan is to take off December.

Late in the training cycle - about 10 days out from the marathon - I had a flare-up of plantar fasciitis. I dealt with PF in both feet several years ago, but this is the first occurrence in probably about 5 years and definitely the first time since I started running. Not sure what triggered it, although I do think the lack of padding in all my running shoes may have contributed to some irritation. I know it is not ideal, but I have some new shoes on the way to use for the marathon. I'll get in one short run with them to just verify they are ok, but I don't expect any issues as it is a model that I already own several of - Mizuno Wave Enigma.

Street lights already? Ugh.

At this point, I give myself about a 10% chance of setting a PR at the Space Coast Marathon. I can maintain a PR pace for around 16 miles per my longest training run. Just not sure what may happen in the latter stages given the inability to ramp up my weekly mileage and knowing what happened the last two marathons. To put a positive spin on things though, I am at a place where I am confident I can finish and even with the injury and training challenges, I should be able to finish in a decent time even if not a PR.

Look for more posts coming up over the next few days!