Training For The Last Two Weeks - January 16th-January 29th, 2012

It has really helped with the unusually warm winter we have had in Chicago to make it more enjoyable putting in all these miles. Over these last couple of weeks I have put in back-to-back 100 mile weeks. My long run is now up to 17 miles and other than the normal ware and tear of running lots of miles I am healthy and injury free. I am definitely at the point wear my muscles are tighter than usual and I will be getting a massage from my guy, Craig White of IHP, in Deerfield, which will help lessen the chance of injury from muscle tightness.

For this post I'll just concentrate on the highlights and give you my workouts for the last two weeks:
January 16th-22nd:
Tuesday - Treadmill workout. 8 x 3 minutes with 2:30 rest. This basically was simulating doing 1000's. All of my intervals got faster starting from sub 5:30 mile pace down to 4:30 mile pace.
Thursday - Treadmill workout. 3 sets of 1 min hard x 1 min jog. Great workout to simulate quick 400's. I got the treadmill down on the last few to as fast as it could go @ 4:16 mile pace.
Sunday - 17 mile long run through Palatine and Arlington Heights @ 6:10-6:11 mile pace.

January 23rd-29th:
Monday - Treadmill workout. 4 x 5:30 with 3:00 rest. I started again at sub-5:30 pace and got down to sub 4:40 pace.
Wednesday - Hill workout and tempo at Reimer Resevoir in Palatine. 8 x 300m steep hills with 300 m jog rest & then 1.60 mile tempo @ 5:20 mile pace.
Sunday - 17 mile long run in Naperville with many hills and 15-20mph wind.


***All week day workouts have been with the Harper College distance guys***


As always, thank you for reading!

Eric Wallor

Training For The Week of January 9-15, 2012 With Review of Last Week

Last week I did 90 miles. My second workout of the week was on Friday morning and I did a 5 mile tempo. I ran it on my own and ran 26:45 (5:21 pace). Good workout for my first tempo of the season. I did my 16 mile long run Saturday. Typically, I don't like running a workout and then my long run the next day since it's like running back to back workouts. The weather was great last week. Several days where I ran in shorts and  a t-shirt. Fricking awesome for January in Chicago!

January 9 - January 15, 2012
Monday - 10 miles in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.
Miles = 14

Tuesday - Fartlek/800m workout. 8 x 800m with 90 second jog rest (typically running about 300-350 meters) + 1 x 400m @ 1:13.. My intervals: 2:26, 2:27, 2:26, 2:29, 2:32, 2:34, 2:32, 2:28. Considering this was a workout I did on my own on the roads and not on the track it was solid. Two weeks earlier I did 10 x 800m workout with Pat Rizzo on the track and ran between 2:19-2:24 with 90 seconds rest.
Miles = 15

Wednesday - 8 miles in the morning and 6 in the afternoon. recovering from yesterday's workout. The afternoon run felt better than the morning run.
Miles = 14

Thursday - Hill workout in the morning. 10 x 350 meter hill (in the snow) with 350 jog rest. 10 miles in the morning. 3 miles in the afternoon (Lots of snow so footing was bad and it was super windy.
Miles = 13

Friday - 8 miles in the morning and 5 in the afternoon.
Miles = 13

Saturday - 16 mile long run

Sunday - 10 mile recovery run

Mileage for the week = 95


Eric Wallor

The Marathon Man Blog is Back for 2012!

 Hi All,

I am back writing and doing video blog posts about my marathon/race training for 2012. I won't be writing or video blogging everyday, but you can expect more than once a week from me. As always I will give you a little bit of information from each day. Could be the weather, how my body is feeling, what else is going on in my life, etc. Since we are in the first week of January as of this writing let me give you my training schedule for this week (January 2-January 8).

Monday - Coldest day of the winter so far. Windchill of 6 degrees for the day. This was a shorter day than I wanted but ran 7 miles in the morning and 5 in the afternoon. 12 mile day.

Tuesday - Still cold, but not as bad as yesterday. 10 miles in the morning and 5 in the afternoon. 15 miles total.

Wednesday - AM Fartlek workout. 2 mile warm up. Then 1 min hard x 1 min jog, 2 min hard x 90 sec jog, 3 min hard x 2 min jog, 4 min hard x 2:30 jog, 3 min hard x 2 min jog, 2 min hard x 90 sec jog, 90 sec hard x 1 min jog, 1 min hard x 1 min jog, 1 min hard x 30 sec jog, 1 min hard x 30 sec jog, 30 sec hard x 30 sec jog, 30 sec hard x 15 sec jog, 30 sec hard x 15 sec rest x 15 sec hard. 2 mile cool down. Total miles = 10. Total time = 59:04 (5:59 average for all 10 miles). This is a good hard workout and the goal is to go hard, but on the jog keep a good enough pace going so the body learns to recover while still going a good pace. I try to keep my 'jog' intervals under 6:30 mile pace. My hard paces right now are anywhere from 4:45-5:15 mile pace.

PM - 6 miles easy and weights.

16 mile day.

Thursday - 13 mile day. 8 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon.

Friday - 10 miles total. Tempo run. Still figuring out actual distance. Will be 5-6 miles most likely. Weight lifting day #2 of the week.

Saturday - 16 mile long run.

Sunday - 8 mile easy run.

Week = 90 miles

Stay tuned for future posts as on my racing schedule and different things I am doing to supplement my running.

Thanks for reading! Please comment to this post or on Facebook or Twitter. Also, feel free to share this blog with others.

Take care,

Eric Wallor