A couple of months ago a friend somehow convinced me to sign-up for the Canadian Death Race. The numerious bottles of champagne on New Years Eve were likely what led to three of us huddled around a computer at 1AM registering for a 125 KM relay through trails in the Alberta Rockies. While I’ve been running on and off for years it’s been a year since I’ve really trained for a race. With the race drawing near and my training not being what it should be I’ve put in place a pretty hectic training schedule that kicked off officially 3 weeks ago.

The plan is based around the Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training (FIRST) model that I read about in a runners world article a couple of years back. The plan is focused around 3 to 4 days a week of running with extensive speed work and cross training 2 days a week.

It’s a tough plan but I’m already happy with the results. The most difficult thing for me is the pacing. I prefer to run a variety of routes and don’t have a good feel for the milestone distances within my runs making it very difficult to pace as per the plan. It would seem that some treadmill and/or track work (or one of those fancy gps watches) is needed to ensure that you are training to the proper pace.

In any case if you’re training for any type of running race I suggest you check out the runners world article and the FIRST site to see if it might work for you.

Hopefully this plan will save me from death in the Alberta mountains. I’ll let you know come August!