Maintaining motivation on a long road

Peckham

Have previously spent a lot of time in these parts, but drifted off at the end of last year after hitting a long-term goal of sub-3 marathon as well as significant life change (birth of first baby).

The long term plan
Now I'm on a long road to Boston Marathon next year (assuming I manage to correctly jump through the registration hoops), and need to keep the motivation up over the next while. As Boston is still 11 months away, that goes to the back of my mind (apart from remembering to register in September).

Where I've been the past few months
Since reaching my sub-3 goal in Berlin last September I drifted away from running a bit. I was one of the 3:30 pacers in the Dublin marathon, but that's the last race that I ran. My running has been pretty sporadic since then, and a 30 mile week would easily be followed by a 6 mile week. The birth of my son and heir in March led to a planned 6 week break from feeling guilty about not running and I've gradually got back into it over the past month or so.

The medium term plan
In order to keep motivation over the summer months I've entered the 10 mile and half marathon races in Phoenix Park. No plans to run PBs in these races but I want to be in 1:30 pace for the half (PB is 1:24) - i.e. pretty much the pace I ran for Berlin marathon.

Autumn/early-winter target is to have a stab at my 10k PB (which according to a quick check of the BHAA site is currently 38:34).

The training
Time is a bit limited with other commitments so will be looking to get out 4 days a week for the next while, with one speedwork day. The only way I can really juggle it all is to have Friday as my longest run (up to 13 miles) and then Saturday as speedwork. Not ideal, but that's the way it goes. Will get two other midweek sessions, probably 8ish miles Monday and 4 miles Wednesday.

Speedwork will be coming from Daniels, which I must re-read.

So, hopefully this will give me the motivation I need!

rainbow kirby

Welcome back, and congrats on the birth of mini-Peckham

Woddle

Great to see you back and best of luck with the targets.

Peckham

Since that update I've managed to get out once, and the thought of having to update this thread was part of the motivation to get out. Would have been easy to skip the run, as by the time a window of opportunity emerged it was 30 minutes before start of Munster-Leinster match. Instead I hit record on the digibox and pulled on the runners.

Saturday - 10k - 42:30
Had intended to go out for a leisurely 6 miles, but decided to push on and see how things felt. Wasn't easy, but recovered quite easily afterwards. Clearly lots of work to be done over the summer to get down to 37:XX.

Plan this week is run home from work today and Friday (c.9.5 miles each), easy 4 miles Wednesday morning. Then on Saturday, depending on how I'm feeling, I might kick off some (yet to be planned) speedwork sessions.

tunguska

Daniels 5-15k plan is savage. You follow that to the letter and you'll be in great nick.

RacoonQueen

Good to see you back Peckham.

Slogger Jogger

Congrats and good luck with the new regime.