First week of marathon training schedule

The first week of july is here and its time to start the 4 months marathon training program. Technically time to experimenting is over and I should stop barefoot training but obviously that's not happening. In fact, I am going into training in best preconditioning including last four months with approx 20mi/week and last two weeks at about 30mi. More over I am already qualified for 2009 marathon with 10 races even before I start training this year which is kind of cool.

On barefooting front, I ran two longish runs this week 6.5 and 7.5mi and should finish week with 30mi as expected in the flyers training program. I am still doing Thursday run early in the morning in vibram partly because I want to overly conservative while I am ramping up milage past 30mi. I don't really think conditioning of the sole is an issue any more for small run and I am now experienting with rough off-pavement running paths. I suspect even 4mi training on such surface should improve conditioning than longer runs on pavement. Of course, soon I will have to hear up for long runs barefoot which I haven't done yet and am a bit nervous about. Hopefully shorter runs on trails is good training for long runs.

Finally I may try some barefoot hiking this week. No idea how barefoot running translates into barefoot hiking but I think I can handle part of it.

BF for 157mi