Marathon and Goofy Training Starts Today

Today is the first day of my Fall 2010 Marathon / 2011 Goofy training program. Of course it was a rest day so instead of running I’m blogging. My target fall marathon is the Road2Hope Hamilton Marathon which is 13 weeks away and Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge is 9 weeks after that. My “home brew” training program is below.

I chose the Hamilton because (1) it was the latest fall marathon I could find in Ontario and (2) it ranked #4 for proportion of Boston qualifiers in 2009. I’m not looking to BQ this year but I might be ready for that in a couple of years so it would be good to test drive course. I have a couple of exciting tune-up races also scheduled for the fall. I’ll be doing my first trail race at the Run for the Toad 25K and I’ll be running the Horror Hill 15K with a friend. Thirteen weeks isn’t very long to get ready for a marathon but I’m going to make it work. My goad for this race is to finally beat four hours. 3:59:59 here I come.

The Goofy is a whole other story. For those uninitiated into the world of running it’s a half marathon on Saturday morning followed by a full marathon on Sunday morning. I’ll be going down to Florida to visit my best friend from high school and then going to Disneyworld with three friends. I don’t expect to be making any PB attempts at Disney but you never know.

Of course this training program is just a guide. I’m already mixing this up this week and doing a long training run tomorrow evening!