10 Weeks to the Boston Marathon: Last week's training

It's been a while since my last blog post, but there hasn't been much to report since Berlin. My wife and I had our first child on December 14th, so training was a little lighter than usual this winter. This was expected of course, but I am now into full marathon mode preparing for Boston in April. I have normally reserved my spring seasons for the track, so I am very excited to finally be able to incorporate the world's oldest marathon. 

After the Berlin Marathon in September, I took a couple weeks off before starting to slowly build volume again. I was able to get up to 130 miles per week with some decent workouts, but with our delivery date approaching, running had to take a back seat for a few weeks. I knew I wouldn't be sleeping much, but I underestimated how tough that was going to be. Once I started coming out of this foggy, delirious period, Portland was hit with a mini ice storm right around Christmas. That left me only a few weeks to prepare for my half-marathon in Qatar on January 12th. I actually had surprisingly solid workouts during these few weeks and was fairly happy with my performance (7th place) in a loaded field. The time was only 63:45, but it was warm, windy, and a 5k out and back around a single cone, so considering the preceding month, I was pleased with my effort. After a few days recovery from the long travel, I jumped right into marathon training. We were fortunate enough to have Eva's parents fly from Czech to help us with our newborn during this period which really helped me get into a sleep/train routine. 

I have posted the last couple weeks of training below and will now start posting weekly up until Boston. Our volume strategy this time around is to alternate between 140 miles per week and 120 miles per week. The daily volume actually won't change much, but I will take one day off every other week to catch up on sleep and prevent injury. This is one step closer to the 150/135 alternations I was able to do pre-injury. In the coming weeks I'll look more closely at the field, which is historically deep, and talk about my race plan moving forward. I'm healthy, hungry, and have fun toy to play with at home in between training sessions (baby Oliver). 

Total Volume:

12	140	Sunday	1/21/2018	Long run 20 miles
		Monday	1/22/2018
		Tuesday	1/23/2018	Threshold: 4 mile, 3 mile, 2 mile, 1 mile @ 70-71, 4-3-2min recovery
		Wednesday	1/24/2018
		Thursday	1/25/2018	Run 10 x hills or 200m strides
		Friday	1/26/2018
		Saturday	1/27/2018
11	120	Sunday	1/28/2018	3-4 mile warm up, 4 mile @ 70-71, 10 miles @ 6:00, 2 mile at 70-71, cool down = 23-24 miles
		Monday	1/29/2018
		Tuesday	1/30/2018
		Wednesday	1/31/2018	8 x 1 mile on hilly course (4:48 down to 4:28)
		Thursday	2/1/2018
		Friday	2/2/2018	12 x 200 meter hills
		Saturday	2/3/2018