The hard part is over.

The greatest part about training for a marathon? Finishing training for a marathon! And you finish a lot sooner than you might think: three weeks before the actual race.

I've been preparing for the Chicago Marathon on October 11th this year, and I just put in my last brutal workout yesterday. From here on out, it's all easy maintenance running and washing your hands a bunch so that you don't get a cold before race day. ;) That's part of the attraction of the sport, at least for me. It's such a slow-adaptive process that the benefits of training takes weeks to pay off. Actually, I take that back. SOME of the benefits of training take weeks to pay off. Some of the benefits of marathon training actually take months and years to pay off! I've said it before, but it really can't be stressed enough: consistent commitment over time will give you improvements you never thought possible.

On the other hand, now that marathon training is mostly over, things get a little boring. When you go from running one, two or three hours a day to thirty, forty or fifty minutes, you find that you have a lot of free time on your hands. And since most marathoners are the active, type-A personalities, it can be pretty hard to sit still and let your body rest for three whole weeks to get ready for the big show. My two cents: take this time to REST. It's not a good time to start a new cross-training regimen, or try rock-climbing or whatever else. Why risk injury and trashing the past fifteen weeks of training? Not to mention the six months of base work you might have put in.

If you're going to start a new hobby, try one of mine: knitting, reading, drinking coffee or starting a blog. They're much less injury-prone. ;~)

My favorite workout

Like I could only pick one favorite workout – not a chance. This is ONE of many of my favorite workouts.

Here’s the deal with Yasso’s. Bart Yasso is a crazy runner and good too – note that I did not say he’s crazy good, but crazy and good. He’s run on every continent, in the nude, every distance known to man, through jungles and tundra… His book, My Life on the Run was a quick and fun read that I’d definitely recommend. Anyway, he didn’t really invent this workout, but he likes it a lot, so it just kind of got named after him.

Here’s the workout: Do a 1-2 mile warm-up. Start out with about 5X800m with a 400m recovery jog in-between. Take full advantage of the recovery!! As far as pace goes, you want the fastest possible average time that you can manage. This means you need to take it a little easy at first, because those last couple are going to be a doozie! A little faster than your best 5k pace is a good time to shoot for. After the 800’s do a mile or two for a cool-down.

Here’s the progression: Do Yasso’s once a week, adding one repeat every week without letting your average pace drop, eventually getting up to 10x800m. Now, if you’re just starting out running, it’s probably not time for you to jump into a 5x800m workout with 4 miles in the warm-up/cool-down – that’s a tough workout. Start with 1 mile each w/u and c/d and 3-4 repeats. Go from there. If you’re already a seasoned vet, you can start with 5-6 and limit the recovery to 2-3 minutes. Or, (this is crazy awesome), for a super-hard workout, instead of recovery, do 20 burpees, then get right back into the 800m repeats. After 100 burpees and 2.5 miles of speed work, you’re gonna’ be pretty sore. ; )

Here’ the neat thing: the average of your 10x800m repeats can be a pretty accurate predictor of your marathon time! So, if you average 3:30 on the repeats, you could reasonable expect a 3:30:00 for the marathon! Shooting to break 4 hours for the marathon? Try to work up to 10x800m in an average of 4:00 each. Pretty neat, huh?

Thanks Yasso. Happy running.

THIS JUST IN:

I didn't know this was possible until just recently: you CAN run without tons of fancy equipment and miniature laptops on your wrist. In fact, You can run with almost nothing, like a caveman might.

I’ve had this conversation with a buddy of mine – we’ll call him Craig Grouper to protect his identity. He's a longtime supporter of this barbaric style of running. I, on the other hand, have been the longtime proponent of running with a heart-rate monitor, GPS, iPod, Camelbak fanny-pack etc..., And I just suffered a huge loss: my Forerunner 305 died. (*tear) This was easily one of my saddest experiences to date. I didn't know what to do with myself. I thought for sure I'd have to just throw in the towel and hang up my running shoes. But just when I thought all hope was gone, I remembered that conversation with Greg, err...Craig, and how he said that you can run with nothing but the shoes on your feet and a pair of embarassingly short shorts.

Believe it or not, it worked. I ran without knowing my heart rate, pace, average pace, lap pace and distance. And you know what? I had a pretty great run. Granted, I imagined myself a paleolithic hunter chasing down a woolly mammoth, but that just added to the fun! And since then, (it seems like it's been years, but it's really just been weeks), I've been having a darn good time running like this.

So here's my two cents: if you don't have a fancy watch or a GPS or a robot that does the running for you, just go out and run. Run according to your exertion level where 10 means you're about to puke or pass out and 1 means your sitting on the couch eating cheesy poofs. Run at about a 5, throw in some level 8 or 9 sprints, and then finish up running at 5 again. Piece of cake. And it's fun. (And cheap.)

For extra credit, try to catch a woolly mammoth. ;~)