Target 40

Its the end of May and I am just now allowing myself to believe that I can be back in shape and healthy by October. I am a doubter, obsessive about the injuries that have hobbled me in the last 6 month, but this past week has given me hope. I have been able to put together a 6 day training week without locking up or limping home. I am aggressively stretching and rolling out my legs, have started to eat like an athlete again, and am laying of the endless pints of beer. Last night I ran my first hard workout in months. Today I will do an easy warm up / cool down and then shut down this circus for 2 days and allow my body to recover. Im going to try to do a 7 day cycle this year followed by a full day off and an easy day of mountain biking. This seemed to work for me last year. The one thing that I am going to modify is the frequency of my long runs towards the end of my training cycle. Weekly 20 plus milers left me depleted by the end of September last year. I am going to try to do more 20 milers this year but space them out with at least 10 days apart. I am getting ahead of myself here, but I feel like its time to turn the ocd back on and just go for it. June is my last month of basic conditioning so i will be adding a few extra easy miles to my weeks next month. When July comes I will being my climb back up the mountain mileage wise. I plan on peaking at 75 miles this year and not running to many sub 6:30 miles during speed work sessions. The endless 5:45 mile repeats last year were over kill. For marathon training I think more 6:20 mile repeats will be better than burning out with 5:40s. We shall see.