January 14th: Am I a Heretic?

I put in my first treadmill work at Planet Fitness today.

Sorry it's blurry, but there's nobody to see, anyway.

Yes, it's a minor-league gym. They actually say in their ads, "We're not a gym. We're Planet Fitness." And that was certainly reflected in the number of people working out, compared with Work Out World -- either the resolutionaries have already quit, or PF's core customer just isn't that committed in the first place. But I'll tell you what: The treadmill works just as well as the ones at Work Out World. And for $10 a month, and 10 minutes less driving each way, that's a big deal.

I was actually able to do a little core work: lunges and squats. Not great, but better than nothing. And I still had time to get in 4.5 miles on the belt. My original plan was to take it easy, but I wasn't really feeling it today. I think it was the humidity -- though I'm getting better at coping with that. Nonetheless, you know my story: When I'm not feeling it, I go faster. So I started at 6.5 (9:13 pace) and negative splitted my way up to 7.0 (about 8:30) by the end. 40:45 total -- a 9:03 average pace.

I want to talk a little more about training plans, because this has really been on my mind a lot, especially since Sunday's 10-miler. After 2 weeks and 1 day of formal marathon training, I'm 14 miles total ahead of where Higdon's Novice 2 would have me. I feel good. And the more I think about it, the more I just can't get with the low mileage in the plan, for a few reasons:

• So much reading I've done really stresses getting beyond 40 miles per week. Higdon tops out at 36.
• On the week of the 20-miler, Higdon has only 15 other miles. That strikes me as putting a lot of eggs in one basket.
• Here's the biggie: Why would you top out in training right at the point of the legendary "20-Mile Wall"? I don't see the wisdom in relying on "race-day magic" to carry you through the six most difficult miles of the race, when your glycogen is completely depleted and you're going basically on adrenalin -- or simply falling apart altogether.

So I think what I'm going to do is simply keep adding miles to my runs for as long as I still feel good doing it. For example, last week, Higdon would have had me go 3-5-3-9. I did 4-6-4-10. And I'm going to top out at 23 or 24, not 20 -- I think it's important for my body to learn how to run in a GD state. (I have to believe that morning fasting runs really don't replicate the 20 Mile Wall.)

Anyway, tomorrow is 6 miles or so -- and looking at the forecast, I'll be on the belt for the next few runs. I really need to take it easy with the pace, so that on Thursday I can feel good about 3 miles of intervals.

Total miles since starting the blog:  235.7