I never mentioned the actual name of the marathon I’m running on 9/11. It’s the Leigh Valley Marathon (or Via Marathon). It’s a point-to-point course starting in Allentown, PA and ending in Easton, PA. The course was designed by the wonderful Bart Yasso! I love Bart!
I wanted to do a review of the FIRST training plan, which I used for the NJ Marathon. For a description of the plan and the modifications I made, please see this post. Overall, I really liked it and will be using it again (with modifications) for the LVM.
What I liked:
1. The FIRST program has specific Boston qualifying plans. For NJM, I used the 3:50 plan and I liked that all my workouts were focused on getting me to run a 3:50 marathon.
2. Nothing but quality workouts. There are 3 key runs per week: speed, tempo, and long. I added a 4th run each week (an easy run) to increase my overall mileage. These key runs were hard but since my overall mileage was lower, my body could handle them.
3. The speed workouts each week nearly killed me; but they absolutely without a doubt made me faster.
4. The tempo runs were manageable and I was able to do them without too much difficultly.
5. I felt the long runs were a little easy. I often ran faster than I was supposed to but I generally do that anyway (see this post for an explanation). My endurance is much greater than my speed and this training plan made that very apparent as I was sucking wind at the track!
6. I only had 1 case of “brick legs”. Usually when I train for a marathon, this happens a few times. Again, I attribute this to less overall mileage.
7. Running 4 days a week allowed more time for yoga, which I desperately needed during this training cycle.
What I did not like:
1. Even though running 4 days a week was a plus, I had to get over feeling like a lazy slug. I have always run 5 days a week, with 2 rest days. But I really wanted to make yoga a top priority so I kept to the 4-days-a-week running regime. With 3 tough runs a week and 1 easy run, I don’t think running a 5th day would have any added value.
2. My overall mileage was low. I had to get over this too. I maxed out at 43 miles per week! My body doesn’t thrive well on high mileage (I consider that to be 60s and 70s) but in previous training cycles I was getting into the 50s. It was hard to not see those numbers climb higher than 43 but I think my legs were thankful.
3. This wasn’t an issue for me but I want to give warning to anyone thinking of using this plan. There is no base building phase. Most plans have you build mileage first (slowly and safely) before you do speed work. With the FIRST plan, you literally “hit the ground running” (pun intended) with speed work. I wouldn’t recommend this plan for beginners. If you don’t have a strong base of 30 miles per week established add about 6 weeks onto this training plan to get your base building time in. You’ll be less likely to get injured.
What training plan are you currently using? Or are you winging it? I love seeing what plans people use to train. It’s such a matter of preference.
