Ok, gents.....****'s getting real.
Exactly 4 months out from race day in Berlin. Yay!!
But, in all seriousness, I've been getting out the last few days and I loaded up Hanson's beginner's plan on my calendar (btw, found a cool tool on reddit to import any plan onto your online calendar if anyone is interested). The first few weeks are pretty "easy" and should serve to get a little base that I should have already had in place but didn't. Whatever. I'm not saying I'm going to follow the entire plan without missing a workout but I am going to try pretty hard to do most of it, including adding a little bit more these first few weeks so it's not a big shock when it jumps up big in week 6.
My goals for this race are legit to:
1) Not die
2) Enjoy the race.
I have no time goals whatsoever. And I don't plan on running this thing "hard" either. I want to make this an "enjoyable" marathon, running at a mostly comfortable pace for most of it. I'll stop and take pictures and basically just take it in. At my best, running that downhill race, I managed just under 9:00/mile pace or just under 4 hrs. I'm nowhere near that kind of shape. If I can do this thing at even a 10:30 pace (just over 4 1/2 hrs) comfortably I'll be content (and if it's slower than that, I don't really care).
The question becomes, how do I train for this with the workouts? While not quite there yet, my easy run paces will basically be that 10-10:30 min pace. When I start doing GMP runs, should I use the same time and basically just keep all my runs these next 4 months "easy"? Or, should I push a bit more during training so that running that pace during the race will make it feel easier? Keeping in mind that, while I'm going to really try to do it, I'm not ecstatic about training anyway and I think I'll have a higher likelihood of success in getting these runs in if I'm not hating most of them while I'm doing them in the heat and humidity out here that's about to start.
TIA and happy to answer yours......
The entire concept of Hanson's is the plan is built on different paces for different reasons and they all come together on raceday for a great race.
Therefore, its really not effective to not do the harder paces of this plan. Either you do Hanson's or you don't. If you don't, that's cool, but I don't think you can expect results if you blow off the tempo and/or interval work.
For me, I enjoy the grind of the plan and how it builds on each other and you get better each week. No doubt it is a grind though. I can't pretend it will be easy (to be fair, I do the higher mileage advanced plan).
Hanson's is frequently mentioned as not being accurate on the title of "beginner's plan". Do not think the beginners will be easy, because it is not.
If you want to run an "easy" 4.5 hour marathon, then you should train for a 4 hour marathon. If you train for a 4.5 hour marathon, you will find running that pace on raceday will be harder than you probably would like.
If you want to make the training easy for 4 months, then you can do that and just see what feels easy. Whatever that is, is probably likely going to be doable on race day. Because if you taper a bit and have race day energy, whatever pace you run for 20 in training....should translate to 26.2 on race day.
Hope this makes sense.