Chicago Marathon training has flown right by! I’m currently in the middle of week 5 and figured that I should bring everyone up to speed on how my training has been so far. Where have I been? Ah, I know. Starting marathon training the week after getting back from a 2-week long wedding and honeymoon in paradise will do that to a girl and her blog.

So far, marathon training has been pretty solid, though I’ve had to make some adjustments here and there. Life happens. Extremely busy during the week and then it seems that all my weekends are full with travel or some another engagement. But you know what? You can always adapt your plan, if needed.

For my first two full marathons, I followed the Hal Higdon marathon training plans. You can view his assortment of training plans for various distances and training levels here. I also highly recommend his book Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide whether you’re a novice marathoner or advanced. Hey, it got me through the Rock ‘n’ Roll San Diego Marathon and the Portland Marathon where I achieved my sub-4! Though, with the plan that I chose at the time, there was no speedwork involved. Would highly recommend this.

Back to the current marathon training cycle — for the Chicago Marathon, I’d like to really give my all to achieving a PR. The course is fast and flat and if I train right, I should be able to do it.

After consulting with several runner friends and online resources, I decided to do the Hansons Marathon Method: A Renegade Path to Your Fastest Marathon, after hearing so much great feedback on this training plan. I would highly recommend getting the book (I got mine through Kindle) and reading their training principles and training plans to determine if it’s the right plan for you.

One thing to note is that with the Hansons plan, my longest long run will be a 16-miler as opposed to other training plans like Higdon’s which maxes out at 20 to 21 miles. Having a max 16 mile long run is not because Hanson opposes training longer than 16 miles (the elite athletes that they train as part of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project certainly do). Instead, the whole training plan focuses on a concept called “cumulative fatigue” which, by following the training plan, will ensure that your legs become used to the exhausted feeling that most people have while running a long distance race such as a marathon. The longest 16 mile long run works to simulate the last 16 miles of the marathon, which is the toughest, rather than getting me through the first 20. This sounds logical to me.

The plan has me building base for the first 5 weeks and then me been running six days a week incorporating both easy runs, speedwork, tempo runs, and the long run. The mileage and the consecutive days running on this plan will have my legs extremely fatigued by the long run on Sundays. If I train properly, my legs should feel sufficiently fatigued and the long run will act as a simulator for hitting the wall and pushing through.

Phew. That was a mouthful. I encourage you to check out their training plans and see if it works for you.

One challenge to my marathon training this time around is the fact that I’ve been doing CrossFit for the past 5 months. I love CrossFit and think that it’s benefited me in so many ways — it acts as amazing strength training, cross training, and has helped to significantly build my muscle and definition. No – you won’t build muscle like a man. At least……. I hope I don’t look like a man. 🙂

Doing CrossFit 3x/week in addition to running 6x/week this next week will prove to be extremely challenging and tiring. Already I’ve felt the struggles of exercising so rigorously on consecutive days with no rest. I think that, recently, my longest streak of workout/no rest has been 13 days. Crazy, right? For the rest of this training cycle, I’m going to adjust to reduce my running down to 5x/week or reduce my CrossFit to 2x/week, or any combination that makes sense for that week. I’ll listen to my body, take more rest days, properly fuel and hydrate. It’ll be tough, but I’m ready to put in the work.

So are you interested in the workouts I’ve done for the first 5 weeks of Chicago Training?

Here goes!