Planning for New Hampshire Marathon 2012:

After the Mad Marathon over 4th of July weekend in 2012, I was looking for a marathon in the fall to continue my quest for 50 states. I wanted a Saturday marathon since I had plans to be in a tennis league on Sunday nights. This became a huge obstacle for my new priorities of marathons and mileage runs.

The New Hampshire Marathon in late September fit my requirements. It was on a Saturday and it was pretty close by. We did have to wake up early to drive up for the 8am start, but it was only a 2 hour drive.

Training:

After the Mad Marathon, I took my amateur two weeks off to recuperate and train for the next marathon. I would have 10 weeks to train and that includes the taper so I only had about 8 weeks.

I used a similar program as for the Mad Marathon. I only ran three times a week, both weekday runs are about 6-8 miles each with the long run between 12 miles and 26. As I had problems with the last few miles, I attempted to train the full distance in order to do it better. In the end, this training didn’t work for me and many other people say to only train for 20 miles as its too much wear and tear for training. It did prepare me for the marathon but not for a good time.

This was what I ran the 10 weeks of training. I think going forward, I would switch to a 4x a week running plan.

Week	M	Tu	W	Th	F	Sa	Su	Total
1	6		6			11		23
2	5		6			12		23
3		8		6		16		30
4	6		6			18		30
5	6		8			16.6		30.6
6	8		8			22.3		38.3
7	8		8			26.3		42.3
8	6		8			24.6		38.6
9			7	8		13.3		28.3
10	6						Race	29

Some of those runs were done in NY. I will have another posts of long runs I have done in Boston and NY and hope it motivates some of my readers to get out there and run!

Race Day:

My wife left early from Boston to drive up. It was a two hour drive and I wanted to get there about an hour early. Packet pickup was the morning of the race. My wife found a coffee shop to set up shop and spend the next few hours waiting for me.

It was a cold start to the day, cold enough that I started the race with gloves. Later in the day, I put them in my backpack. I run with a hydration pack and also has my phone and credit card. I was also running with a long sleeve Nike Pro shirt underneath. At times, I rolled up my sleeves on the red cotton shirt. It acts like an insulating layer for me with my Nike Pro shirt absorbing the sweat. And yes I have matching shorts and shoes.

Before this marathon, I got sick. It got much colder in Boston suddenly in the beginning of Sept and I believe this got me sick. I seemed to have flu like symptoms.

It didn’t necessarily hurt my running performance, but even during my runs I would be coughing. This didn’t change for race day. I didn’t feel nearly as tired as the weeks before but I was coughing every few minutes, even with cough suppressant. I coughed most of the first half and it seemed to get better during the second half. I believe by the time I finish the race, I completely stopped coughing so I was cured!

After I completed the marathon and found my wife, she commented how she meet another wife of a runner. She can tell she wasn’t local as she was Asian as well. They talked and found out they were from NY as well and he was on a quest to run 30 marathons in 30 different states in the next year. They were planning on doing Portland, ME the next day.

When I was waiting for my massage, I saw them in the waiting area and meet him and his wife. He was a marathon maniac and he quickly mentioned what it was about. That got me curious about the club so I went back home and looked it up.

Qualifying for Marathon Maniac:

I looked up how to qualify and sadly, I could not qualify with the races I’ve done. The easiest requirement is two marathons in 16 days or two weeks. Hartford was coming up and I felt like I could do it. I was running close to the marathon distance every week for three weeks during my training so I thought it wouldn’t be too much trouble to actually have it count. I found the Hartford Marathon and registered for it.

My next post will be about the Hartford Marathon and a bit of panic before the race.