Old Dog, New Trick - Base Training Hack

Sunday with Herb

It seems like the last 20 years, I’ve followed the same basic schedule. I finish my racing season in September, take the month of October off, start base training in November for 3 months, then start marathon training in February to prepare for upcoming races.

This year is no different, other than I didn’t have a race season due to my heart attack and I spent most of September in a foot boot recovering from a deep ulcer.

So here I am, at the start of November, starting all over again with my running.

As of now, my goals for next year is to run our local marathon in May as a Boston qualifier, then focus on a trail 100K next August.

I don’t like running marathons anymore, I was planning on running Boston earlier this year as my last marathon. But my heart attack ruined that plan so now I need to qualify again and do my last marathon in 2026.

To start base training, as usual, I’m expanding my strength training to 3 times per week, with 2 Olympic weight sessions, and one more run specific single leg session with kettlebells. But instead of slowing ramping up mileage with Zone 2 training, this year, I’m going to try something different.

For the last few years, I’ve kicked off my run training with a local “Resolution Run Series”. The series starts with a 10K race in January, with a 15K race in February and finishing with a 20K in March. It’s a great way to start out the year and since it’s a small race, I can win my age group. I treat each race as a training run and in the past, I’ve never done anything to prepare for them.

But this time, starting next week, I’m going to follow a 10K race training plan on my Athletica app and see how fast I can go!

It should be interesting, I haven’t done anything like this for 30 years. But it’s time to build some speed into this old ultra runner!