It appears that, at least for now, my foot problem is waning. I'd not say it is 100% gone, but it is at best occassionally noticable if you know what to pay attention to. So I hope that I have this problem liked.
Given this, I want to start gearing up my running. Slowly, of course, to make sure I don't get injured again. I'm currently running a bit over 23 miles a week on 5 days: 4 40 minute days with 30 min easy run and 10 min of strides, and one day of 50 min easy run. Easy pace for me should be ~9:15 min/mile, but I'm running closer to 8:30-8:45 min/mile. Probably a fine pace if I stay uninjured.
There are four margins here:
a) going from five days a week to six days a week. I don't really see doing this since I want to make sure not to get injured and two days off a week seems like a wise precaution. Also this way I get to stay on schedule given that I'm going to have at least one day off a week just from my weekend commuting schedule this summer. Pschologically having more days off is also more likely to keep me going.
b) putting in a day with a temp run, with the aim of running a 7:30 min/mile pace. The goal is eventually to get to a temp run day with 10 easy run, 30 min tempo run, 10 min easy run, but I may get there in stages, starting out with 5 x (4 min tempo run + 2 min break) and then cutting out breaks until I hit 30 min a this pace. After that I could add in a 2nd day with a tempo run and start working on faster than 7:30 min/mile intervals on one of these two fast days. Putting in the tempo run is probably the most dangerous part of expanding my running schedule, it's what go me injured in the first place. I'll go slower this time, aiming for a 7:30 min/mile pace and not a 7 min/mile pace. Still, I'll try to be careful.
c) expand my one 'long run' day from 50 min up to 90 or 120 minutes. Running two hours should give me a half marathon at an easy pace and seem pretty doable and a worthwhile objective (as well as a pretty common practice among the 40+ year old runners I know).
d) raise the easy run part of my regular day run from 30 min to 40 min and then 50 min.
Tentatively, the schedule looks like this, obviously subject to revision as I think about what I'm doing and things happen. The build up is pretty slow, but that's just caution. I might speed it up...I end up with around 40 miles/week by October (since I'm assuming very slow pace running here, I'm pretty sure I'll go faster). I'm cutting back on milage every 4th week for recovery.
Subject to revision. My wife tells me she intends to gear up to 30 miles/week in the first two weeks of July, when she heads out to the Summer place. But she runs so slowly it is pretty impossible to get injured...maybe I should take that approach as well and gear up to more miles and then raise the pace from there? I doubt I have the discipline to run that slowly. A 2nd tempo run shows up in September or October.
Here is the faster ramp up, probably what I'll do, it fallows the 10% milage increase per week rule. This way I get to 30 miles in the first week of July and two tempo runs as well as a weekly half marathon by the first week of August. I may want to replace the half marathon by a one hour run for recovery weeks.
So that's the plan for now: faster build up, adding two tempo runs, doing a weekend half marathon and moving to one hour regular runs.
Still, I'm not sure I'll stick with a five days of running per week, I may want to more days than that if I stay enthusiastic about running. Why not run if you feel like it? I know, injury...just run slow?\
Update #1: David comments:
What about cross-training? As a means to prevet injury, it has worked well for me. No more than 3 runs per week. Biking, eliptical, or swimming 3 days.
I'm planning on doing 2-3 days of swimming, once I spend long weekends in Massachussetts this Summer. That the purpose of getting a wetsuit. Not sure I can pull off swimming three days in a row, my arms are pretty weak.
What about cross-training? As a means to prevet injury, it has worked well for me. No more than 3 runs per week. Biking, eliptical, or swimming 3 days.
Posted by: David | June 10, 2011 at 12:35 AM