Date: 4/1/22
Training Day: 117
Activity: Strength

How It Felt: The workout felt great, but I’m also an idiot and accidentally did next week’s Day 2 workout instead of this week. I also walked the golf course with my husband to get my 10k steps for the day. The uphills felt tough!

Commentary: After about two weeks of learning more about 80/20 running, I decided it was time to revise my training plan. I was looking at 80/20 training plans on Training Peaks, but I wasn’t sure if they were right for me. I stumbled upon a review of them that I found quite helpful. He said the marathon plan wasn’t the greatest if you’re a slow runner. They go off of time (which I do as well), and he said you likely won’t get enough weekly miles if you follow the plan because it’s geared towards faster runners – average 11 min/mi or faster.

My half marathon pace is an 11 min/mi, but that’s my pace from last year. Who knows what it is now. To keep myself out of the moderate intensity rut, my average pace has slowed down a bit. It’s about a 14 min/mi. Taking this into consideration, I decided to modify my current, homemade training plan instead of paying for the 80/20 50k training plan.

The changes I made:

• Moved fartlek/interval day to Tuesday
• Moved strides to Thursday and made the run time the same as Tuesday
• Moved my weekday recovery day to Wednesday (easy run for less time than Tuesday and Thursday)
• Upped my Sunday run time by 30 minutes
• Added a 30-minute run on Friday (non-recovery weeks only) starting on Week 14 (I might up the time at some point, we shall see)

Most of the changes I made were to get in more run time, which means more miles. While I do believe time on the feet is most important, I also know I need to get miles in if I plan to do ultras. I also decided to do less intense fartleks on Tuesdays. I was using a lot of marathon workouts from The Complete Book of Running for Women. Now I’ll stick to the 5k/10k workouts because the intervals are shorter.

I also plan to spend some time in the moderate-intensity rut zone during my long runs. Although it isn’t recommended to spend a lot of time in this zone, it is necessary. Most endurance runners race in this zone, so it makes sense to train in this zone as well. Between my moderate-intensity rut time during my long run and my fartlek/interval workout, I should achieve an 80/20-ish balance.

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