Vancouver Marathon
Last weekend I ran the Vancouver marathon along with a bunch of my former TNT marathon buddies. It was great to get out of town, visit friends that I have not seen in a while, and test out this cross training I've been doing.

I'm glad to report that cross training works. While training for a marathon (and I have done quite a bit of marathon training over the last 5 years) I usually average 40 miles of running per week and get up to about 60. I do weekly long runs, medium length tempo runs, and speed work with lots of 3mile runs at 10k pace and 800s at 5k pace. The training I am doing now for Ironman averages about 25-30 miles per week, not very many long runs (although I added a few in preparation for Vancouver) and virtually no speed work. Of course I am doing 6-8 hours of cycling per week and 2-3 hours of swimming, and core work, along with this running so I'm working out nearly twice as many hours per week.

So you are probably wondering where this is leading ....... I ran a conservative race, staying comfortable the entire time and finished in 3:52.41. My splits were 1:58/1:54 so I ran stronger in the second half which is the way I like to run marathons. Now, this is not a PR time for me, but it is a Boston Qualifying time and since it is not my A race I was not pushing for a PR. I'm just happy to discover that I can still maintain a good pace and feel strong the entire time.

So, thumbs up for cross training!