Over 40

Today, my weekly mileage was over 40 for the first time. What, did you think this post was about something else?

Conventional wisdom:
1] Novice marathoners should reach 30-40 miles per week to be ready.
2] Ideally, long runs should not exceed 1/2 of weekly mileage.
3] Novice marathoners should run some long runs of 20 miles.
4] Weekly mileage should not increase by more that 10% at a time.

Whew, that's a lot of rules. Here's my mileage for the summer.


You can see that there are lots of "short" weeks mixed in, but if you follow the longer weeks, you can see a gradual increase. I'm pretty pleased with the way this looks. I think it's healthy to have some recovery weeks as the mileage increases. I wish I could claim that this chart represents the strict following of a master plan, but it's really just the reality of my summer. There were weeks in there when most of my mileage came from sneaking out of the office during lunch.

For the next 6 weeks, before I start to taper for the marathon, I expect to keep the mileage in the high 30s to low 40s. Hopefully, my body will be OK with that. Right now, after my longest week, I'm feeling great.

In the immediate future, I have two 20 mile runs planned - the Flyers Palisades Long Run next weekend, and the ING Marathon Long Training Run #2. I want to support these runs with 40 mile weeks.

It's great that in New York City, there is never a need to do long runs or speed training on your own. It really adds a lot to the marathon training experience to be able to do these runs with a group. I have plenty of experienced runners to learn from, and plenty of novices to grow with. The running community here is nothing short of fantastic. Cheers to you all!