Cutting 15-20 minutes off my Ironman run time next year is a big goal of mine. The best way to do that is to just run a lot. Before I started training for IMAZ last year, I'd run a maximum of 13.1 miles, exactly twice in my life. In the following months of training I've run considerably farther than that on many occasions. But I'm still very new to distance running and most runners will tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to get fast. Immediately after Ironman Canada, I knew I wanted to spend the winter focused on running, so my coach and I decided a January marathon would be a great intermediate to shoot for and to motivate for running. So far, so good, I've been hanging just below 40 miles a week for a few weeks and we continue to ramp up.
A friend of mine from work, David Treadwell has been training for the Seattle Marathon and just put up a post with some of his learnings from it, and it's really one of the best posts on running that I've ever seen. Dave is a very smart guy and regularly has great insights into things and his training experience is no exception. Give it a read!
In other news...after a mostly-dry fall here in Seattle, the party is over. I just got done spending three hours in the pouring, freezing rain on the bike. Ick. Of course it's kind of sunny out now...sigh...