The 16 Week Program

Plenty of books and magazines out there detail preparing for a marathon based on a 16 week schedule. However, the times I'm shooting for require a fairly high level of fitness and and most of those programs assume either a consistent past of base training or that the participant is not overly worried about how long it takes to finish. Both of these are false in my case so I am putting together a condensed training schedule. Note that this is not generally recommended and carries a higher risk of injury. But that's a risk I'm willing to take, and I plan to minimize the chances of injury by...

1) Taking the time to warm-up, stretch, cool-down and stretch again
2) Paying careful attention to how I feel and backing off as soon as something doesn't feel like the normal aches and pains expected.
3) Getting plenty of sleep.
4) Eating well.
5) Getting massages every week for the first 2 months ;)

Note that there isn't anything revolutionary in here; the time frame is simply adjusted for my particular schedule. If you want to learn more about training strategies I suggest going to Runners World(http://www.runnersworld.com/) and searching for "Ed Eyestone". He was one of America's greatest runners and currently writes a column there and is also the Cross Country coach at BYU. My only claim to running prowess is one day after running with him he told me I was "flying". I cling to that moment like only a barnacle can.

OK, with that in mind here's the plan for the next 16 weeks...

Base Building (Weeks 1-4): Just get used to running consistently. Don't worry too much about the pace but try to up mileage by 15-20% per week. Starting off around 20-25 miles the first week by week four I should be up around 35-40 miles per week. One long run per week starting at 7 miles and moving up to 10-12 miles by the forth week.

Core Training (Weeks 5-13): During this period the focus will move to getting more quality into the workouts while still increasing mileage. There will be three major workouts a week with three easier recovery runs. The three workout will be as follows...

1) Long Run - Build endurance by increasing these runs until they gets to at least 20 miles.
2) Interval Workout - Train VO2 max by running repeats of between 600-1600 meters.
3) Tempo Run - Increase lactic threshold with a hard continuous run of 30-45 minutes.

Tapering (Weeks 14-16): At this point I will start decreasing the mileage to allow my body to recover from the last 9 weeks of punishment. I still might keep an interval workout or two in here.

Run St. George Marathon

Well, that's about it. I'll give a more detailed plan for each week as it comes.