The Road to Boston, Part 3 – Training

OKC Revisited

In part 1 I told the story of running in the OKC Marathon in 2021 to qualify for the Boston Marathon in 2022. What I didn’t tell you was this wasn’t the first time I had run OKC. My very first marathon, way back in April of 2010 was at that same race. I had trained with Fleet Feet Tulsa throughout the winter and spring with a small group of fellow runners who became fast friends.

I ran that race in 4:56 and was incredibly pleased with the results. 11 years later I ran it in 3:54:59, over an hour faster. So, if you are ever wondering if you can get faster or better at something, you can. All it takes is the commitment to do it.

For Real This Time

Oklahoma City 2021 qualified me for Boston and this time I would be running it for real in Massachusetts like it is supposed to be run. The journey to qualify that had first entered my head as an even remote possibility way back in 2018 was now real. And so was the training that was about to start.

Time to Start Training, NOT

Actually, it didn’t start right away. From October ’21 when I ran OKC until January ’22 I didn’t do rigorous training. I ran with my group but didn’t do the full distances on their long runs or all the hard workouts. I cut my mileage in half, from about 45-50 miles per week to 20-25. I am a firm believer in having a very restful off-season, especially as you get older since the amount of wear and tear on your body is extreme and it takes a lot longer than you are consciously aware of for your body to recover and rebound from all that.

One of the main reasons people get injured is returning too quick into hard training. My Garmin app gives me an option to categorize my runs and I like to put all my off-season runs into the ‘fitness’ bin, not the ‘training’ bin. It’s just a way for me to remind myself it’s not yet time to push hard, that will come soon enough.

Ok, Now It’s Time

In January of 2022 I started in on my training. At the same time I started leading the 4 hour marathon training group at the Dallas Running Club. There is nothing like a running group to hold you accountable, make the miles go by fast and make great friends.

The Meat

From January through April I trained rigorously, mixing long slow and easy runs with hills, tempo, progression and interval workouts. I ran 5 days a week and during the meat of the training I was doing a little over 50 miles per week. Most of the time it was around 40.

While I was doing that I was also making a Murphy Bed for a guest bedroom in our home. This involved a lot of pretty heavy physical labor so I slowed down that process for the 2 weeks before the race to make sure I didn’t wear myself out.

The Taper

With about 5 weeks until the race I started to focus my runs on my goal race pace. I was aiming to finish the race in about 4 hours and that means my pace should be 9:09 minutes per mile. So that is what I started to work on. I did that for the rest of the training while reducing the amount of miles in the final 2 weeks. 2 weeks out I ran about 25 miles and the week right before I ran about 10. That allowed me to recover from the intense body punishment of the season and get the the start line with fresh legs and a fresh attitude.

Next thing you know, We were flying to Boston and the race was coming up fast!