planning for Chicago

On February 22, I started having sharp pains on the outside of my left knee. That day was supposed to be a 9-mile jog, but I stopped at 7.3 miles because of the pain. Two days later I attempted a 4.5-mile jog and noticed the sharp twinges began at about 2 miles into the run. I took a few days off running in hopes of it healing quickly, but that didn't work. It continued to nag me during each run, beginning at about 2 miles until I stopped. I was forced to take an almost 3 week break from running in March because of illness. I had hoped that would cure it, but I was wrong. On March 29, 2009, I completed the ING Georgia half-marathon, having to walk the last half of it because of the intense pain. Thankfully, the pain didn't start until 5 miles into it. I suspected it was an IT band issue. So, I decided to take several more days off, ice it regularly, then start over on my running plan from scratch. Start at 2 miles, slowly build the mileage, and not run on consecutive days for a while. I think it finally healed while we were on Spring Break! It hurt when I jogged two miles on April 6th, then we went horse riding for three days. When I started back jogging, 2.5 miles on April 10th, I had a little discomfort, but no sharp pains. Yay! But not wanting to risk it, I kept with my plan of slowly increasing the mileage a few days each week and adding walking on the other days. So far so good! During 4/13-19, I jogged a mere 5.75 miles, with four other days of walking. During 4/20-26, I jogged 12.02 miles with a maximum distance of 3.5 miles.

Now that I think I'm over that knee issue, I wanted to lay out a training schedule for the Chicago marathon. Tonya made hotel reservations for us last week so my motivation is up. I went on the Chicago marathon webpage today and noticed that they have a training schedule posted for beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. I printed out the beginner plan and worked backwards. It is a 17-week program and the marathon is 24 weeks from now. I planned backwards so I could slowly build up my mileage during the next seven weeks so I will be ready when the training schedule starts. The training plan calls for 4-5 days of running with a few days of cross training, and one complete rest day. The first week of the Intermediate plan has a total mileage of 26 miles. I worked backwards, dropping the mileage by about 10% each week, to get me to 13.5 miles total for this week. I might change plans in June if Tonya wants to do something different since we're planning to do our long runs together. But at least I've got a plan for slow and steady mileage build up plus adding strength and cross-training, for the next few months.