The first “class” session of this year’s Fall Marathon Training program focused on three areas

1) Places to run in the Twin Cities Metro

2) Training Philosophy

3) Goal Setting

Where to Run in the Twin Cities Metro?

Of course I’ve written about great places to run, some of which Nathan included in his presentation:

Here are some links to the places he talked about:

• Minneapolis City Bike Routes
• Hennepin County Bike Maps
• St Paul City Bike Routes
• Metropolitan Council Routes
• Three Rivers Park District (lots of parks and trails)
• Fort Snelling State Park
• Afton State Park
• Minnesota Monthly lists some other bike trails
• Dakota County Parks – including Lebanon Hills and Terrance Oaks
• Kate Havelin’s Minnesota Running Trails book

Listen to the audio of Nathan’s presentation here. [audio:NathansRunningRoutes.mp3]

Marty and Mike talked about the training philosophy of this year’s class (I guess it varies slightly with each year’s coaches) and what we might expect.  Marty mentions that he isn’t a huge proponent of using lots of fancy terminology or wasting money on expensive tests for things like VO2 Max or Lactic Threshold.  He subscribes to  a more “old school” mentality of getting the miles in and alternating between hard and easy runs.  With a diverse group of athletes in the room, he said that we won’t work much on specific speed workouts but getting the long runs in and doing some hill training.  We are hitting the hills much earlier this year than last and knowing these guys we’ll be doing some long runs on hills as well.  Their goal, as stated later by Mike is to make sure we have fun and cross the finish line.

Feel free to listen to their sometimes humorous discussion here.

[audio:marty&miketrainingphilosophy.mp3]  For some reason I can’t get this to work.  Any suggestions? It is the same exact link as the one above…  You can scroll to the bottom and listen to the full audio – this section begins about 16 minutes in.

Mike continued the evening’s discussion with a talk about goal setting.  He used a simple pyramid diagram to show what the most important goals are.  The three main goals of a training program are to

1) Have fun/good experience in the training program

2) Get to the starting line healthy

3) Finish (this is then split into 3 subcategories)

a) Finish

b) Target Pace – Double your 1/2 marathon time and add 10 minutes (similar to McMillian Calculator)

c) Dream time – This is a stretch goal that you shouldn’t even think about on race day until after the 1/2 way point and really start going for it after 20 miles.

Listen the audio of Mike’s presentation here. [audio:mikegoalsetting.mp3]

You can listen the complete audio (about an hour long from this first session here)  [audio:July7MarathonTalk.mp3]