Regaining lost fitness and planning for Harrisburg

In my post on recovering from that July heel injury, I'd noted that the lost fitness over the month-long layoff was slowly being regained. Here's an update and what it tells me on how to plan for the upcoming Harrisburg Marathon. The following pace chart is of the four post-recovery long runs (i.e., 11 miles or longer) so far and, for comparison, of the April 10th 19-mile run. The pace for the latter is at about my current BQ pace of 8:58.

Overall, I'm encouraged by the rate of increase in pace, reflecting a steady improvement in fitness over the four runs of increasing distance. The pace has improved (10:00, 9:53, 9:39, 9:32), even as the distance increased (12, 15, 17, 18 miles, respectively). I ran by effort, which I tried to keep the same from run to run. So, the pace became faster, not because I was pushing harder, but because I was regaining my fitness. The other factor was the walks I took for water and fuel (dates or gel). The distance of these walks decreased over the four runs, from 0.15-0.20 mile to 0.10 mile to, for the last two runs, 0.05-0.07 mile. These walks were taken at just before 5, 10, and 15 miles (except for September 25, which was just before Mile 14). For the April 10th run, water and dates were taken on the run at Miles 5 and 10.

The key to what I think has been, thus far, a fairly successful post-recovery training is the slow and careful increase in mileage and effort. Even though the estimated 10% decrease in fitness after a month-long layoff seems low, at least for me, the rate of improvement in post-recovery fitness has been quicker than I'd anticipated. The adaptation curve is still staying above the aging curve! :)

Looking ahead, next week is a cutback week. The long run should be 19 miles, according to my training plan. Instead, I'll be running the Baltimore Half, as a training run. Then, for the following weekend, I'll do a final long run of 20 miles. If the trend in pace improvement continues, I should be at ~9:20, before starting the three-week taper.

For Harrisburg, a 9:20 pace would be ~4:05. That would be five minutes faster than my BQ time for Boston 2018 (4:10), which, because I'll be in the next age group, is 15 minutes slower than my current BQ of 3:55. I had been aiming for 3:50 or 20 minutes faster than the 2018 BQ. But, I'll be quite happy with a 4:05, given my injury-affected training cycle; though, I think a sub-4 is still possible. On any given Sunday ... :)