Houston Marathon Eve

Lukas Verzbicas picks Oregon (absolute stud if you don't know him, defintely worth following), Ritz out of London, thoughts from Bernard Lagat and Peter Gilmore. Lagat is preparing for an attempt at a 9th consecutive victory at the Wanamaker Mile (Millrose Games in NYC tomorrow night, I believe), and is still quite the icon in the running scene. Shane forwarded this to me - a beginners runner program for Boston. Can't believe that is only 3 months away!!!

Ryan Hall has an AWESOME beard, cheat sheet for the USA 1/2 Marathon Championships, and Hall's outlook going into this weekend. I have to say, there is a ton of controversy following Hall with his decision to leave Terence Mahon and use religion as part of his training regimen (???), but there are some things to say about his new training and my thoughts on his running future...

- Elite runners know how to train themselves - coaches obviously help a ton, but Hall has been coached throughout his entire career by amazing talent and has a plethora of workouts/philisophies to incorporate into his own training. He knows his body better than anybody else, and I think he knows what works best for him.

- He took a day off of his training week (per the Bible). As crazy as it sounds to be using the Bible as a training reference, any runner will tell you a day of rest is a good thing. Your body needs to recover at some point!

- Less mileage, body is going to be fresher. Hall limited his tempo workouts, but worked a lot on on/off workouts (mile on, mile off) to work on strength running. A different philosophy, but I think he is banking a bit on some of the mileage he has sustained in past training blocks to get him through for endurance purposes. Not a bad assumption to make, so this is more like a calculated risk to me.

- I love his philosophy of running really easy on easy days to prep for running hard on the hard days. Just my personal opinion, but would rather be closer to 100% on hard tempo/track days then have dead legs and try to bust out sub 6 minute miles. Granted, you're simulating races (towards the end at least), but I strongly feel you lose potential for increasing speed.

- Ryan Hall is Ryan Hall - last year in Boston, he ran 2:08 which would have won almost any year except that year. He ran pretty poor Phoenix earlier, but the Boston time was still amazing and just happened to run it on a day when records were broken.

Not sure Hall will win this weekend, but he is clearly the most talented runner in the field. I'd be surprised if he didn't break 1:03 though, and there are only a couple runners in the field capable of doing so. So stay tuned, we shall see! I believe runnersworld and running times are live-blogging the events (Sat. morning 7:30 a.m. CT, 1/2 championships; Sun morning 6:45 a.m. CT, marathon).

Wed, Jan 26 - 7 miles. Did a neighborhood loop, then a loop around town. Sidewalks/trails are still covered in snow, so ran on the roads and shoulders where I could. Since temps were still below freezing, had to really watch myself for slick spots. The heavy irony is I made it through the run unscathed, but completely wiped out walking up the steps to my place. Not hurt, thank God. Concentrated on form and posture the entire run, ended up hitting the workout in 53-54 minutes - too fast, but I felt good so I'll take it.

Thur, Jan 27 - 0! Switched day off because of late work dinner, no biggie.

Going to do speed work tonight since I am feeling pretty good and need to hammer this workout out. Planning on long mileage over the weekend, and finishing off a decent running week. Good luck to all Houston Runners!