Cough and wife... stopping me from my 40k

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Ok, thats a lousy excuse... but I have been coughing and not feeling 100% to go out for a 40k run. My wife has been threatening me with a divorse if I went out and did the run anyway! I figured it is better for me to take a short break and maybe do it next weekend. I wanted to do some research on distance that can be run as part of the training for the marathon:

1. Here is what Patric McCrann, author of the Irondistance Run Training eBook and a seven-time Ironman finisher and avid endurance runner had to say: 3 hour is the limit if you run for more than 3 hours then you are doing more damage to your body than train it.

2. Marathon Training says DO NOT run the whole marathon distance! I wonder why... the longest they recommend is 23 miles!

3. Greg McMillan has a very interesting strategy about long runs, he splits the goal of the long run into two

a) Long, Slow Distance Long run with the following objectives

1. Burn fat
2. Strengthen legs
3. Deal with mental and physical fatigue

b) Fast finish, Long run

1. Practise marathon goal pace
2. Practise equipment, nutrition, pre-race routine
3. Learn to run fast when tired

I like the second set of goals and here are the guidelines

1. Start easy but finish with last 30-90 minutes averaging marathon goal pace
2. Run last 1 to 3 miles as fast as you can
3. Complete 3 to 5 times before the actual race

Running Goals

I have set some personal goals related to my running:

1. Register and run Chicago Marathon and New York Marathon

2. Qualify for Boston Marathon

3. Compete in Iron Man in 2012

I think all the goals are acheivable, if I am going to put in the work.

So, what are the challenges?

I need to improve my Marathon time by over 45 minutes to qualify for Boston

I need to learn swimming as I can barely survive in the water

Plans

I am running Chicago Marathon this october, and my goal there is to see how far I can push myself towards qualifying for Boston. In order to increase my time I am planning to do a lot more track runs. The plan is to start to do some track work today, I am going to run 3x800 at a pace of about 3 min 20 sec as recommended by Yasso below.