The Woodlands Marathon Goal

Tomorrow is the Woodlands Marathon.

Seems like I have been training for this thing forever and now it is finally here.

For the training I used the Pete Pfitzinger Advanced Marathoning 18/70 plan. It peaked at 70 miles per week and at the end tossed in some speed work. For the five months that I did this plan my total running volume was 1092.24 miles. That breaks out to be an average of 218.45 per month.

The peek months were December with 251.33 miles and January with 251.68 miles.

During this training period I did quite a bit of racing:

- Rocky Raccoon 50K
- San Antonio Half Marathon
- Turkey Trot 5mi Race
- LaPorte Half Marathon
- Texas Half Marathon
- The Houston Marathon
- BridgeFest 5K
- LifeTime Fitness Run for Chocolate 10K


The races in Bold were new PR's!

As THEY say The proverbial hay is in the barn.

Time to race.

The pacing planning that Kevin and I are going to use is that of even splits. We are going to go out around a 7min/mi pace and keep the 3hr Pace Group (6:52 pace) in sight. Once we get loose after a couple miles them we are going to try and maintain pace with the group and try and hit the half way point around the 1h 30m mark - a few minutes over is okay.

We will try and maintain this pace up until mile 20 and if we can pick it up slightly then we will if we need to back off some then we have some wiggle room.  To Boston Qualify I need to be sub-3:10 and Kevin needs to be sub-3:05 so he has a little less wiggle room then me.

If one of us needs to slow then the other is free to just keep running. A lot of times I see people run together and they implement the Navy Seal policy of "No Man Left Behind." This will not be our policy. We are going to be more like the CIA, "I have no knowledge of his existence?"

This is the best for us to help pace each other but also not impede one another from having our best race!

So that is it.

If this even pacing plan is successful then we should be coming in around 3:03.

Jennie is running her first half marathon at the Woodlands as well, so make sure to wish her luck!

Annie is going to be the spectator extraordinaire and will be on Twitter and Facebook with updates. Here is her Twitter: @airvin95, and Face Book: Here.

Thanks for Reading,

Jeff