2015 Cellcom Green Bay Marathon

My main goal for the spring was to train for a faster road marathon PR.  I chose the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon because it’s local and I enjoyed the race last year.  The course starts on Lombardi Avenue and goes through Ashwaubenon, De Pere, Allouez and Green Bay.  The biggest highlight for many is a lap around Lambeau right before the finish line.  In typical Wisconsin fashion, your bib has tickets for free beer and brats.

For this race I used Hal Higdon’s Advanced 1 Training Plan.  I opted to skip the Monday runs, but otherwise stayed pretty true to the plan. The biggest change from last year, when I was focusing on just running more miles, was to add consistent speed work into my training. I really enjoyed the three types of speed work in the training plan; tempo runs, intervals and hill repeats.

My goal for the race was to be in the 3:30’s, and my training runs had me on pace for that time.  The weather this winter and spring was better than most years, but most of my training runs were still in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.  The weather for the race was windy, warmer and much more humid than it’s been all spring.  At the start of the race it was 62 degrees with 83% humidity and just got warmer as the race went along.

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The first 22 miles went according to plan.  I tried to stay around 8:10-8:15 per mile while walking through each water station.  Things were going well but then the humidity started to take it’s toll and I struggled the final 4+ miles. I finished in 3:44:46 which was good for 198th out of 1281 finishers.  Looking back at last year’s results, the times were much slower this year due to the warmer temps and humidity so I’m not too upset that I missed my goal time.  I guess this means that I’ll just need to do it again next year and continue to push myself with speed work.

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Now I’ll shift my focus to trail running and the Luna-Tics Trail 50K in July.  I will continue with the speed work and am aiming for a 50k PR.

Garmin Data

Gear Used

Shoes

Merrell Bare Access 3

Shorts

Brooks Infiniti II Notch Shorts

Shirt

Tek Gear Sleeveless Performance Tee

Socks

Injinji RUN 2.0 Lightweight No-Show – NuWool

Watch

Garmin Fenix 2

Nutrition

3 Vanilla Clif Shot Gels

1 Tri-berry Gu

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