Mid Week, RnR, Long runs and racing

The mid week workouts are posted. Those training for Mercer island, I gave you another week of hills since the course is on the hilly side, I know, yeaaa!! You'll hit the track next week. So most are on hills with a few on the track.

For those of you training for a spring Marathon and running Mercer Island I use your Marathon training plan with Mercer Island as a race built in and a bench mark race to help determine what your marathon goal should be come race time, so we use the marathon training plan through that race.

For those running Rock n Roll in June, they will be having a press conference this Friday  to announce  the new course that you'll be running.  I'll send out info when I find out about it.

Now that we are coming into spring there will be a lot of races coming up. I would use those in preparation for you upcoming larger events. One of the benefits of running more races other than getting used to the competition is that running shorter faster races will really help out your marathon or half. Running these shorter races regularly will help your speed but also make your marathon pace seem really slow and I think make you more efficient. For some this creates a dilemma, you have your long run planned and a race. I think you can accomplish both, here's how.

1. If the race is an important one and is on Sunday then skip your long run that week and run the race hard or run long on Friday or Monday. If the race is on Saturday then run your race and run long on Sunday.Running your long run a little tired hardens you come marathon time.
   
2. If you're running the race as a workout then don't worry about it, just do your long run on the day that weekend that the race isn't on.
3. (My Favorite)Incorporate the race into your long run. Run a few miles before the race and a few after, a good way to work a workout into your long run.

The nice thing about racing and running a long run close together is that as I mentioned last week your long run is slow. Either because your running the race the next day so you run slow or maybe you ran the race the day before so you run slow because you're a bit tired from the effort the day before.  Remember slower is better for these runs.

If you have questions or concerns about this please let me know.