1. How I Set Up for a 2:35 Marathon Debut

Preamble: Marathons are a bigger deal today compared to the 1970s and 80s, at least in terms of participation and general interest. And it seems that anyone serious about doing a marathon is a either strong adherent to a plan (e.g., Pfitzinger, Daniels, Hanson’s, Hudson, etc.) or they have coach and training team.

In this post I will take you back to a simpler time. We knew less, did not have fancy shoes and calorie count watches. Formal training groups and private coaching services were uncommon, and good training guides were not all that readily available. So a lot of us did things on our own. Here is my story.

Background – Heading into 1983 I had been running and training for almost six years, including four years of cross country and three of track at a small (NCAA Division III) school in the Midwest. In that program I had improved fairly quickly (running sub 10 for the indoor 2 mile after just 9 months of training as distance runner, and under 32 for 6 miles on the roads at 15 months into it) but my improvement plateaued and even backpedaled due to classic over training, poor nutrition, and stress from trying to wend my way through a school with high academic standards.

My last season of cross country in 1980 was mostly a disaster, and I ended it with an underperforming 27th place (of about 70) at our conference meet, and a 27:10 (on a very fast 8K course), and 110th place, a the NCAA Regional Championships. The team environment that last year was somewhat toxic. As disappointed as I was to close out that way, I loved the sport and vowed to keep running.

However, my running cratered even more in that first year out of undergrad. I believe the overtraining had resulted in some muscle damage and it took more than a year for my body to return to normal. I raced about 15 times in 1981 and usually did not come that close to what I had done the previous year. My best mark was a 33:35 10K, about 40 seconds slower than my PR set the year before.

1982 didn’t start any better, as I had ben working 50-70 hour weeks doing biological field work in Northern Minnesota, and running only maintenance miles. By the end of February I had put on 10 lb. I returned to my college for a weekend and my old teammates ridiculed me for the extra weight. I got back into shape quickly, however, and PRd at the 8K (26:35) in the spring. Later that year with just 6 weeks of focused training (after a summer of 40 mile weeks, but a lot of hiking at 10-12000 feet) ran a 1:13:05 half marathon at mile high elevation. That is still my all time best (sea level or altitude) at the distance, and equates to 1:11 or under at sea level.

At this point I had made two attempts to run a marathon. I broke down during a high mileage summer in 1980, after a string of 100 mile weeks, about three weeks before the Paavo Nurmi Marathon in Hurley, Wisconsin. And in 1981 I was trying to prepare for Grandma’s Marathon in Minnesota, but ended up with tendintis in my foot about four weeks out. Those non-starters aside, at the end of 1982 I felt stronger than I had in three years, and felt that I should attempt a debut in Denver the next spring.