T-10 weeks to SFM!

Only 10 more weeks until the San Francisco Marathon (July 25)...the countdown begins!

I really like this race. Most US marathons are in either the spring or the fall to avoid the heat. But the SFM is about the only place in the US you can run a marathon in the middle of summer. You see, SF is at its most foggy in the summertime. (Many tourists don't seem to realize that...you see frozen people wandering the streets of 55F weather in shorts and T-shirts. )

The SFM is also a loop course....my 2nd favorite kind of course. (my preferences: point-to-point, loop, out-and-back, stupid-madeup-course-with-tons-of-small-retracings).

I ran it last year and had a great time, so we're giving it another go.

Last week (#11) we ran 5, 10, 4, rest, rest, 10.6, 19.1 for a total of about 49 miles...week 11 was about 44 miles. Yesterday I did the 19 miler and felt great...I did my slightly hilly 13 mile loop, then did 4 miles on the Paly track, then its 2 miles home from there. Ran the first third at 10:20 min/mile pace, the second third at 10, and sped up the last third to bring the overall pace to 9:44.

This week supposed to be a 'stepback' week: we've increase mileage for two weeks, now we back off a bit on the long Sunday run (to 12-13 miles) and also keep the pace down.

The schedule I'm using is loosely based on Hal Higdon's Intermediate II schedule, which is here..his schedule is numbered forward from 1 to 18, I prefer to count down, so right now I'm on his week 9, which is a 38 mile week.

I'm a bit ahead of his schedule as I just did a 19 mile long run, but his week 8 shows only 17...., which is on purpose, since you might need an extra week if you get a cold or some other problem that prevents you from training.

I plan to use that extra week to do one more 20+ mile run....we'll see how that turns out.

-paul

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