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Saturday, April 6, 2013

Marathon Training Update III (Furman FIRST Plan)


Very interesting results in my training.

I've been following the Furman FIRST plan, which is big on prescribing paces for all your workouts.  So instead of doing all LSDs at the same pace, they increase the speed as the weeks wear on.

This is from my Garmin data, for the three 32km LSDs in the program (last one was today!)

32km LSDs
DatePace/kmAverage Heart Rate
Feb 15:41154
Mar 25:23154
Apr 65:14154

Quite a fluke that they all happened to be exactly 154bpm, but that suggests a very good improvement in fitness.  The same heart rate is sustaining faster and faster paces, suggesting my heart is gaining efficiency as the training is progressing.

Now my one deviation from the plan - instead of a 3 week taper, I'm taking 4 weeks and doing Paris to Ancaster bike race next week... I'll still be doing three runs, but LSD will be pulled back from 32km this week to 24km @ 5:14/km.  Then I'm back on plan for the last 3 week taper.

Hopefully it all works out!  I'm pretty excited by what I'm seeing so far, and I've felt great.

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