Fall Running Schedule!

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I am excited about my fall running schedule!

After Grandma's, I immediately emailed Eric to say, "Ok, I did another round of Hanson Beginner plan, got the sub 3, now what?!  I have a marathon on my schedule for 11/11 and kinda want to do another half in August.  Thoughts?"

He responded with a lovely voice memo that was calm and outlined the plan. 

So here is my fall:

1.  Run the half marathon

I'm excited to run a half-marathon.  My current PR is 1:28:35 and I think I could run faster, though I will be doing this on week 5 of marathon training so I do not want to trash my legs.  I signed up to do the Madison Mini Marathon on August 18 with my husband's cousin (who is running it as part of her training for a fall marathon BQ attempt!!!).  Outside of my personal distaste for referring to half-marathons as "mini marathons", I am excited about this race.  My kids are likely going to do the kids run and it gives us an excuse to spend a weekend in Madison, which my fam is always game for.  I also think this will give me a good preview of the topography for the marathon in later fall, although I haven't compared the courses yet.

2. Move up to the Hanson Advanced Plan

Obviously, I have had success with the Hanson plans, so there is a bit of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The goal of my fall marathon training cycle is to get a sense if I can handle a bigger training load. I mentioned in my pre-Grandma's blog post that the Beginner plan seemed much more manageable the second time around and that I think I am ready to push myself with the Advanced plan.   I will be starting the 18 week Advanced Plan on July 15 and noting how I feel.  

3. Run the Madison Marathon on November 11

The goal is to survive a harder training load and get to race day.  The Madison Marathon course is hilly and thus will be a more difficult course.  Eric said if I could sub-3 on a more difficult course, with handling a bigger training load, that will set me up with a great base to build on for a great spring marathon in 2019.

I really like having a plan for a chunk of time and looking back, and feel relieved to have the fall planned out.  I also have done really well with viewing things as stepping stones to bigger things - I think this helps my mental game a lot and has helped me really love the process of training more and more with each cycle that I do so I like that this training cycle is more process focused than outcome-based.

Training begins in 12 days!