Friday, July 4th, was an important milestone - 100 days until the Chicago Marathon.

Perhaps you’re kind of in tune with some training plans and you’re wondering why, if we’re at the 100 day mark, I’m just finishing my first week of training while some people are already pushing four weeks.

The answer is: when I trained for Chicago two years ago my best run was the week where I ran the 20-mile training run.

I felt so good during that run.

And it got me wondering, what if I didn’t taper and just built up to 20 miles and ran the marathon on that day?

I tried it with New York City and it worked OK - that was a hard race.

And I think it’s worth trying again with Chicago, if for no other reason than the mental aspect of it.

20 miles is a lot of miles. On the one hand, there’s the mental aspect of ‘Hey, I ran 20 miles in practice, I can do it on race day!’ But on the other hand, which is a hand that illustrates a little bit about how my brain works, there’s the thinking, “Oh man. I have to run 20 miles again for the race? And then more?”

I think if I’m built up for 20, I can run 26.2. So my plan takes me up to day 105 - race day - and the longest (and last) run of my training cycle. That’s a total of 15 weeks of training. (The plan on the Chicago Marathon training page, for example, is an 18-week plan.)

It’s all experimental for me.

As for week 1, though, I would say it couldn’t have gone better.

I’m going to strive to be honest with these weekly reports on the training - if I’m not feeling great I’ll tell you.

But right now I feel great. Week 1 is not the most challenging week, of course, but it’s encouraging that I feel so good. I wish I could bottle this up when things get hard and I feel a little worn out as time goes by and I forget what it feels like to feel strong. Because this is a good feeling - but I know I’ll feel even stronger as the weeks progress.

Let’s break the week down:

Monday: 3 miles, at about a 10:40 pace

Tuesday: I did a 5-minute core workout, 10 minutes of lower body, and 10 minutes of upper body

Wednesday: 6.28 miles of intervals - 2 miles warming up and cooling down at the end, and 6 intervals at a faster pace

Thursday: 10 minute core for runners workout

Friday: I ran the 4th of July Sudbury Road Race - 3.79 miles, 9:00 pace

Saturday: 6-mile long run, 11:00 pace

Today is rest day.

The road race was a cool thing to slot in on Friday - I wish it wasn’t right at the beginning of the program, because it breaks things up nicely and I’m not bored of anything yet so I don’t really need that. But there will be other races later on in training that will serve that purpose I guess.

During the intervals I felt like I could have gone faster, which is probably a good sign. I did not, though, because I know what’s coming and how those interval workouts get harder. I remember, too, there was a note that comes in a few weeks or so that says, “If you feel like you could go faster, you can go a little bit faster.” So I’ll wait to see if I still feel that way then.

And those cross-training workouts are all Peloton workouts. I’ll figure out which workouts I want to do each week maybe a day ahead of time, depending on how I’m feeling. Some days I’ll work in a bike ride too.

I was thinking about heading to the Esplanade in Boston for my long run, but instead I decided to check out a local path (a new thing! I’ll be writing about it). It worked out pretty well for these 6 miles. I do like visiting the Esplanade around my birthday though - I usually do that around this time every year. So maybe that’s where I’ll run next week’s long run.

These first few weeks of my plan are not terribly intense. I’m kind of working myself back up to timing up with the Runner’s World program so that everything lines up with that 20-mile run. On July 14th I’ll start what they consider ‘week one’ - so I’ll be repeating most of this for another couple of weeks, though I’m increasing the long run a bit for the next two weeks.

On to Week Two!

Total Miles for Week 1: 19.07

Total Miles Overall: 19.07