Plan Update - Short Range Dopey Challenge Training


It’s the end of August, late summer.  September is in a few days and RunDisney Marathon Weekend is just 4 months away. Time to stop thinking that real Dopey Challenge training is off in the future, I’m no longer preparing to be able to start training,  the time is now.

I have more or less followed my Long Range Plan that I laid out back in March.  I ran several 25-30 miles weeks in June and July, a couple of 30+ weeks in August.  I also completed, per plan, the Bolder Boulder 10k at the end of May and the local Strider Half Marathon at the end of August.  

I continued to work on strength training for my hip discomfort and feel that I have gotten myself back to where I was one year ago with respect to my right hip.  I am not pain free, but the muscles around my hips feel stronger and I have several techniques to manage the discomfort.

In early Summer, an issue with episodes of irregular heart rate flared up.  It’s something that I have been managing for a couple of years, but suddenly at the end of June the episodes became more frequent.  I’m learning to be more diligent with monitoring my heart rate while running, but the result is that my overall pace is slowing down even more.  

And just to add one more challenge, I suddenly developed pain in my left knee, just before a 20 mile build up run with the local running group.  I had to abort that run.  I think it was just runner’s knee.  A few days of rest, stretching and massage, and I was back running on it.  Though now I always feel a little low-grade pain in that knee.

So, I have three vulnerabilities that could rear their ugly heads during training, or worse during Marathon Weekend.  My goal is to train just enough to be able to finish the first three days and make it to the start of the Marathon on the fourth day.  Then I just need to stay ahead of the Balloon Ladies.

With that in mind, my training strategy is a hybrid of Galloway plan and the Hal Higdon plan.  Higdon’s plan is for seasoned marathoners who are starting at a certain level of fitness and strength.  I am a seasoned marathoner, but my hip injury and irregular heart rate episodes have put me at a lower level of fitness and strength.  The Galloway plan is a kinder and gentler approach with fewer running days but sometimes more mileage in a single run.  I want to leverage Galloway’s fewer running days but Higdon’s more reasonable long runs.

For reference, Jeff Galloway’s Dopey Challenge plan can be found here:

And Hal Higdon’s Dopey Challenge plan can be found here:

Lastly, my hybrid plan is in the table below.


With the Strider 22-mile buildup run in my week 0, I will exceed the total mileage for the corresponding Galloway (10) and adjacent Higdon (1) weeks.  My next two weeks are easier recovery weeks.  From my week 3 through 8, I loosely track the bi-weekly buildup of both the Galloway and Higdon plans.  From my week 9 through 14, I follow a similar pattern as the Galloway plan with some adjustments to the total mileage. This was a tricky period because I wanted to avoid doing a Dopey Simulation during the week of Thanksgiving.  From my week 15 on, Jeff, Hal and I are pretty much on the same page, with a Dopey Simulation week followed by two weeks of taper before the big week.  One difference in my plan is that I shifted the days of the week by one day such that my long run is always on Saturday and Sunday is always a rest day.

So that’s it!  I have a day-by-day plan for the next 4 months. Let’s get started.

(Updated 5-Sep-2023 to rework weeks 10 through 14 to avoid high mileage during the week of Thanksgiving)

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