Training is fine so far: I kept up the mileage at 45/week for two weeks now, almost three. I tried a workout this week: I wanted 8 x 400 at Daniels' R pace, because I thought it might be nice to train according to his blue plan, but it proved to be way to ambitious, and I ended up doing 4 x 400. It also may be the case that my v-dot is not nearly 55, so I might have run them too fast. In any case, I don't think I had enough base building anyway, so I basically gave up on the blue plan.

Also, it is all but decided that my older daughter, who is almost 13, and runs cross country, and I, will run a 5K in late fall. So it would be nice to train specifically for that. If I fit my plan before that marathon plan starts, then I'll have 19 weeks for this (including the two 45 mile weeks I've done), and it will be partitioned as follows (using Daniels' tables on season training):

Phase I: 08/15-09/11
Phase II: 09/12-10/16
Phase III: 10/17-11/27
Phase IV: 11/28-12/25

There are many small 5Ks late November, early December, so no problem on finding races. I just hope it won't be too cold.

The only thing to figure out is how to increase the weekly mileage while adding quantity without hurting myself.

Only a few days after my last post, we went to vacation to Yellowstone lots of hiking, but no running. It's actually a bit scary to do that in bear country, but also, I didn't want to take time away from family activities.

We got home, and I jumped back into running: for about two days, when I got sick with the flu. Another week of no running. I started slowly back on August 11. Now I'm back full swing: completing 45 miles this week.

Since it seems somewhat unlikely that I'll run Boston next year (it all depends if my friend can qualify), I'll assume I'll run the KY Derby Marathon. If I can do that in 3 hours, it's better than the result in Indy last year.

So here is the plan.

KY Derby: 04/29 (Saturday)
18-week program starts: 12/25 (Sunday)
08/21: Exactly 18 weeks before plan start.

I want to be able to run 60 miles a week, 15 miles long runs, and some quality workouts for the weeks before the training program. Shouldn't be hard...

This must one of longest break in the blog I've ever had. No, I have not given up running. But my mileage decreased, and I spent my energy elsewhere. Firefighting, home renovation, etc. I got back to regular training in the spring once: I ran 35 miles/week for about month in February, but then our bathroom projects came about, and I was just too exhausted physically to do serious training.

If you know me, you probably realize that I'm not claiming any return to running until I'm fairly sure that I keep to it. Well, it's been a month now that I've been doing 40 miles of easy running per week. I just got to the point that it's finally getting easier, so I'll probably bump it up to 45 next week. Do that for month, then 50/week for a month, and then maybe 55 or 60 to get to a point when I'll have a chance for 18/70 or 12/70 cycle for either Boston, or Kentucky Derby Marathon. Depending if my friend qualified.