Truthfully, I was going to wait a week until you all missed running enough not to groan when you saw the subject of this email.  However, enough of you have asked about it to justify this early posting.  So here we go again.  Attached is the training schedule for the Tel Aviv Marathon which will take place on Friday March 26th.  That gives us 10 weeks (not counting this week) to prepare.  The schedule starts out relatively easy with a first long run of 18 km in Week 1 (next week) but it builds quickly to a 30 km run in Week 5 and then adds two Rechovot Runs in Weeks 6 and 8.  We do not have the luxury of a 3 week taper since the training period is too short so therefore we cut the taper down to 2 weeks.  The schedule is based on our tried and true program of 4 runs per week including a recovery with strides on Saturday night, speed on Monday night, medium long on Wednesday morning and of course, our long run on Friday morning.

 

A few observations.  The Jerusalem Half Marathon is on Thursday March 18th, just 8 days before the Tel Aviv Marathon.  If you are planning to run Tel Aviv hard, you should treat Jerusalem like a good training run but not an all-out race.  If your goal is the Jerusalem Half but not the marathon, you should follow the same schedule with the single exception that there is no need to ever run longer than 24 km on Fridays.  For those of you who did Tiberias and would like to participate in Tel Aviv but can't bear the thought of 10 more weeks of intensive training, there is no need to panic.  You can follow the schedule with some modfications at a lower intensity and still make it to the finish line respectably and with a smile on your face.  Whatever you do, make sure to save some energy for the greatest event of all, the 200 km Har La'emek relay race on Thursday April 29th.  Looking forward to reuniting with all of you on the road.