I’ve been thinking for a while now about how I should best set up my training for the Chicago Marathon, and remembered an article I had read in Runner’s World a while back. The article discussed a training program from the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training (FIRST) which prescribes only three days of running per week, and promises faster times. I decided to buy their book Run Less, Run Faster and have started reading through it. While I’m not completely done with the book, I’ve gotten through enough of it to begin my planning out my training for the summer and fall.

I started this past Saturday with my long run. The FIRST plan calls for three runs per week, plus at least two days of cross-training, which isn’t too different from what I have been doing lately just because of schedule constraints. This plan, however, calls for much faster paced runs than what i had been doing, and my long run pace needed to be adjusted accordingly. Normally I would run around 8:00/mile pace for long runs and my easy runs, but FIRST calls for running long runs at Half Marathon Pace + 20 seconds, closer to 7:20/mile than 8:00. I was worried I would feel too tired by the end of the 9 miles to keep that pace, but I was surprisingly energetic by the end.

Then last night I had my first “Key Workout #1″ which was 5 x 1000m @ 5:58/mile pace. The tough part about this for me will be keeping track of my pace on the treadmill. I’ve found that my Nike+ iPod system isn’t terribly accurate on a treadmill, especially at faster speeds. Most of my intervals which were at a much faster pace, didn’t show as much faster as they should have. So I guess I’m not really sure how closely I hit the pace, but at the very least I know I got a good workout in, and it was better than the 5 or 6 easy miles I would have done otherwise.

I’ll probably spin tonight on our new spin bike (that’s another post altogether), and tomorrow night is my first FIRST tempo run. I’ll try to update here as often as I remember to, in case anyone is interested in how the program works.

Many of you know I’ve been a runner most of my life, and have become even more into running in recent years. I’ve run every distance from the 800m in high school up to the 2007 Chicago Marathon, and even a Half Ironman Triathlon. When this year’s Chicago Marathon reached capacity, I saw it as an opportunity to turn my running into something that would benefit others. When looking for a suitable charity to run with, I wanted something that had meaning to me, and as a new parent, a children’s hospital seemed like the perfect fit.

So I have decided to participate in the Chicago Marathon as a St. Jude Hero. My fundraising efforts will directly support the work of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to find cures and save the lives of children fighting cancer and other deadly diseases, and I am asking for your help! Click here to go to my donation page, or ccontinue reading below for more on why St. Jude’s is a worthy cause.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, founded by the late entertainer Danny Thomas, is one of the world’s premier pediatric cancer research centers. Children from all 50 states and from around the world have come through the doors of St. Jude for treatment, and thousands more around the world have benefited from the research conducted at St. Jude – research that is shared freely with the global medical community. St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance. No child is denied treatment because of a family’s inability to pay.

St. Jude is unlike any other pediatric cancer treatment and research facility. Discoveries made by St. Jude have completely changed how the world treats children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. With research and patient care under one roof, St. Jude is where some of today’s most gifted researchers are able to do science more quickly.

Danny Thomas believed that “no child should die in the dawn of life.” Please make a donation to support my efforts for St. Jude and join the fight against childhood cancer. You can read some stories of a few brave St. Jude patients, and find out where your donation goes.

Thanks for helping me reach my goal for the kids of St. Jude!

I’ve updated my racing schedule with some past results and some new races I’ve got either planned, or that I’m already signed up for. You can access it by clicking the “Racing” link at the top of the page.

I’m still considering running the Chicago Marathon for charity. If and when i make that decision, I’ll be sure to update here.

I finished week two of the pushup challenge, and will start week three tonight. I’ve decided to take my time with this and do week three at level 2 once through, then level 3 the next week. Last time I ran through this, I did it ll in 6 weeks, and may not have always hit my minimums for the final set. So this time, I planning in going slowly through it to make sure I can get to 100 by the end, even if it takes me 8 or 9 weeks instead of 6.

I went for an easy run tonight to test out my knee (so far, so good) followed by week two, day one of the hundred pushups challenge. I maxed out at 15, which was the minimum. I might have been able to push for a few more, but wanted to get going on some other things.

I decided to put off running until tomorrow, to give my knee that extra little bit of rest. But I still wanted to do something, so I decided to do Insanity’s Cardio Abs DVD. It’s a quick 20 minutes, but it’s a solid core/ab workout. I know I’ll be feeling it tomorrow.

I just finished week one of the Hundred Pushups challenge. My max reps set for Day 2 was 15 (was a minimum of 9) and Day 3 was 20 (minimum of 13). So I seem to be progressing, which is good. I’m looking forward to starting week two in a couple days.

My running, on the other hand, has been delayed. My knee is still bothering me a bit from Disney, but it’s getting better. I may try to run a few easy miles tomorrow, otherwise I’ll just skip the first week of my nine week plan altogether. It’s better to rest now and be fully healed for the end than risk aggravating the injury now.

We got back from Disney last week, and we’re already focusing our running for the Shamrock Shuffle at the end of March. But I wanted to do something more than just running three or four days a week. So I’ve come up with a couple of things I can do, whether it’s the Cardio Abs workout from Insanity, or Ab Ripper X from P90X, or just a routine from Runner’s World, I hope to do some core work a couple of days a week.

I also decided to start the One Hundred Pushups Challenge again. I went through it once before, and it definitely got my pushup max higher, but I never got to 100. So this time I’m hoping to do it right, and not move on until I get the proper max, and hopefully end up with a max of 100 pushups at once. The plan has you doing between 5 and 8 sets of pushups, with a structured amount of rest in between sets. It gets progressively higher, and is aimed at getting to 100 in six weeks. I’m not sure I can do it in six, but Day One last night already went better than I remember from the first time through. I hit all of the first four sets, and maxed out at 20 on the fifth set, where the goal is just nine. I’ll try to at least post my max every day I do it (Mon, Wed, Fri), if not some more thoughts on how it’s going.

Here are my official results from the WDW Half Marathon from this past Saturday:

Clock Time: 1:35:52
Chip Time: 1:35:14
Overall Place: 246
Division Place: 24

And my Garmin data is available here – http://connect.garmin.com/activity/22331046.

Overall, I’m very happy with my results. 246th overall out of over 17,000 finishers is pretty decent. I was about a minute off of my PR, but considering the weather I’m not surprised. It was below freezing at the start, and started raining/snowing/sleeting just before we headed over to the start line. It turned into a light but steady rain just before the gun went off, and stayed that way the whole time. I got a pretty bad cramp around mile 7, so that slowed me down a bit. Other than that, I felt pretty good the whole time.

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