Tobacco Road Training Plan Overview

I've worked out my training plan for the Tobacco Road Marathon.

My goal for this race is to qualify for the 2023 Boston Marathon, which must be done by running a qualifying race between Sept 2021 and Nov 2022. For my age group, the qualifying time is 3:35:00 but just barely running that time won't guarantee a spot... they'll take the entire field of qualified applicants and accept a certain number, starting with the fastest and adding people until they've reached their cap. So it's better to run faster than the qualifying standard. 

My goal time is 3:30:xx or overall pace of 8:01/mi   

Gulp. 😳

 

The Plan.

Basic structure: 

• 5 running days per week (Mondays and Fridays are off)
• Track Tuesdays (aka #10kTuesdays) and Altamont Thursdays will remain
• Wednesday will include a midweek long-ish run (with optional tempo/pace miles)
• Saturday long run (with optional goal pace miles at the end)
• Sunday marathon pace run (idea is to hit goal pace on tired legs)

I'm using this calculator to establish my training paces - 

I entered my goal race pace (8:01/mi) and it gives me training paces/times for various distances and types of training runs.

Based on a few runs I've done recently, the paces seem to be quite accurate for my capability and perceived efforts.

For example, the 100% 1-mile I ran a few weeks ago was just a couple seconds slower than the 1-mile Repetition pace. The 100% 5k I ran last week was again very close to the Interval pace.

Seems good! I also like that each "type" of training run has an explanatory link of what it means, what its purpose is, and how to execute it. I'm excited to put a little more structure into my runs for the next few months.

Here's how I've laid out my paces:

Goal Marathon Pace       8:01/mi

Long Run (easy) pace     8:30-9:30/mi

Tempo pace                     7:32/mi

*Tempo or threshold pace is comfortably hard running for either a steady 3-4 miles (or 5 to 6km) or repeated runs of 5 to 15 minutes each, with 1 to 3 minutes of rest between the runs.

Interval (800-1000m) 6:56/mi

recovery should be as long as the interval (3-5 min)

Reps (400-600m)     6:32/mi

recover fully between each one

Gonna be a busy, challenging, and exciting way to finish out the winter but I'm looking forward to it! 😁😁