Running lessons: Decision time

LaHave River

Here it is less than 8 weeks until Maritime Race Weekend so I guess it's time to decide. Am I marathon training or am I not?  And what about Cape to Cabot in St. John's, NL, in October?  Am I really going to try running the "toughest race in eastern North America"? Here's the elevation chart for C2C:

Yeah, it's ugly. Lots of steep hills, ending with a nasty climb to the top of Signal Hill.

I've been trying to run more hills recently and plan to start serious hill training this coming Thursday but the chart is sobering all the same. In order to complete C2C, I'm obviously going to have to train a lot more seriously than I have been.

In an effort to make up my mind last week, I took a look at an elevation chart for the San Francisco Nike Women's Marathon, which I ran in 2011.

San Francisco is where I achieved a "personal best" marathon time of 4:36, despite some impressive elevations and issues with my right leg. The hills in SF weren't nearly as high as those I'll face in Newfoundland, but they were tough and, of course, the race was twice as long. Given that I ran San Francisco so strongly, surely I can finish Cape to Cabot. Right? I'm not sure but the time has come to "piss or get off the pot", as they say.

Fortunately, I had two excellent runs this past weekend - a relaxed 9k run by the ocean Saturday afternoon, followed by a 16k to LaHave first thing Sunday morning. The weather was perfect (see photo above) and, despite a busy week at home and at work, I felt strong and relaxed throughout - which makes me think that I may (just barely) be able to pull off preparing for two tough races this fall.

Here's the training schedule I drew up this morning:

Marathon and C2C Training Schedule  2013
Week #	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thur	Fri	Sat	Sun	Weekly Total
1.   July 15-21		7k tempo		5k easy		9k easy	16k	37k
2.   July 22-28		6k tempo		6k (3 hills)		19k	8k easy	39k
3.   July 29-Aug4		6k tempo		6k (4 hills)		23k	8k easy	43k
4.   Aug 5-11		6k tempo		7k (5 hills)		26k	8k easy	47k
5.   Aug 12-18		8k tempo		7k (6 hills)		29k	8k easy	52k
6.   Aug 19-25		8k tempo		8k (7 hills)		32k	10k easy	58k
7.   Aug 26-Sept 1		8k tempo		8k (8 hills)		23k	10k easy	49k
8.   Sept 2-8		8k tempo		8k easy		16k	10k easy	42k
9. Sept 9-15		5k easy			5k	42.2k race		52.2k
10. Sept 16-22		5k easy		8k easy		12k	8k	33k
11. Sept 23-29		6k tempo		7k (6 hills)		16k	10k easy	39k
12. Sept 30-Oct6		7k tempo		8k (7 hills)		18k	10k easy	43k
13. Oct 7-13		8k tempo		8k (8 hills)		12k	9k easy	37k
14. Oct 14-20		6k easy		6k easy			20k C2C	32k
Total distance								603.2k

In addition to hill training on Thursdays, I'll need to run hillier routes throughout the week so that my legs are ready to pound up and down all those Newfoundland hills. I may also need to resign myself to running a relatively slow marathon so that I can recover more quickly afterwards.

So friends, what do you think? Am I crazy to attempt this? After all, I'm 51 years old and haven't trained all that seriously since my last marathon attempt in May. What would you do in my shoes?  Any and all thoughts and suggestions welcome.