Toronto Marathon Pre-Race
The last marathon I ran was the Toronto marathon in 2005, and I finished in 3:57:36. I was shooting for a sub-4 so I was pretty stoked with that time.
Now, nearly 8 years later I’m excited to be running it again, but I’ve done a lot of things differently this time.
I’ve been running less. A lot less - only once per week. Last time I was training about 5 days a week and it really felt like a grind towards the end. The ramp-up was too fast, and I had several injuries throughout the training program including my knee and lower back. So this time around I decided to mix strength training and running so I’ve been lifting weights 3 times a week concentrating on the big compound movements, and running my long distances on the weekends. I have been virtually injury free and have not really felt like the runs were a grind - even those bitterly-cold pre-dawn winter runs.
I’m running “barefoot”. Well, in Vibram FiveFingers, anyway. I started transitioning to a minimalist running style during my preparations for the Las Vegas Half back in Dec 2011 and ramped up slowly over about 6 months. Now, I couldn’t imagine going back to regular shoes - they just feel so confining.
I’m also carb-loading this time. I dropped 7lb in 10 days on a low-carb diet (mostly water weight), did a short tempo run on Wednesday morning, and now I’ll be carb-loading like this for the next 3 days. Hopefully it will make the later stages of the race a little easier.
As usual I have three goal times for the race
- Sub 3:45 would be awesome
- Sub 3:55 would be good
- Sub 4:00 would be satisfactory
Mostly, I’m interested to see if “less is more” when it comes to training.
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