Marathon training begins again

Last summer the girls excitedly said they wanted to go back to Boston. My first knee-jerk brain reaction was recounting the miles and hours of training to qualify for the Boston Marathon. But in that same instant, I was excited to take on the challenge again. After all, the 2018 Boston Marathon was ran in pretty nasty conditions.

Boston was the last marathon I’ve run, and that was 10 months ago. A few months ago I decided to endeavor in the BQ challenge again. I’d really like to run Boston in better conditions. Hopefully on a beautiful New England spring day. Not in 35-degree weather while getting dumped on by rain and with a 30-mile per hour headwind.

I thought about running the Tunnel marathon again, but I’ve already run that course. And, while we’d love to visit again, Elise and I have already had a vacation in Seattle. And, it turns out, our schedule conflicted with all 3 race weekends for the Tunnel marathons.

We have friends who moved to Portland last year, so I searched for fast marathons in the Portland area so I could run the race and then we can spend some time visiting our friends and seeing the city. I found the Revel Mt. Hood Marathon. It’s a 5,000-foot downhill race spanning the full 26.2 miles. That’s going to be a challenge in and of itself. While I’m sure it’s going to be fast, my quads are going to be completely shredded afterward.

I’ve maintaining somewhat of a running base with close to 30 miles per week. I’ve been trying to get back to keeping a to-do list. On that list are things like:

– Order topsoil
– Get taxes done
– Clean the backyard
– Build training plan

So today I decided to build my training plan. I thought I had close to 16 weeks to train. Much to my surprise, I have the 18 weeks that is optimal for a periodized marathon training plan. And this time I’m incorporating speed work, which I’ve never done in marathon training before.

Goal #1: Qualify for Boston
Goal #2: Run a 2:59:59 or better

Training officially starts on Monday, February 25th.

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