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Advice for an (overly?) ambitious beginner
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Hi to all, sorry for the long post :) But I need some advice and context is probably important.

First let's start with a bit of background. I'm an overweight tall man (120kg/194cm - 265/6'4). Last year I got into the idea of running. Started on my own and got to a point where I could run about 8k without dying. Seeing that progress can be made, I gave myself an ambitious goal of running a marathon by the end of the year. That was around March, the marathon was at the end of October. I got a training plan from RunnersConnect.com and started following it almost religiously. I made a lot of progress by mid-late August but by then it seems I have overtrained myself basically and developed Achilles tendonitis in both my legs. That derailed that plan completely. All I had from racing was a 10k in mid-August.During that time I fell into a rabbit hole of ultra trail running on Youtube and found it very much to my liking. The issue I had with road running was also that in order to train on any semblance of a flat course I had to take a 20 min drive but I have basically unlimited trails when I step out of my house. It is also much less mind-numbing but I digress.So after 4,5 months off the running wagon, I started back slowly with longer walks and hikes in January. Now I'm slowly building back to running on the flats and walking/hiking the climbs. This amounts to about 4 hours on legs per week at this point. I've mostly been going by feel and/or heart rate, making sure to keep the effort low to build up my base. I've also been doing overall strength work in the gym. I also try to do some cross-training with my e-bike with the same low effort in mind.

Now to the interesting part. I've been thinking of setting a very ambitious goal of completing an ultra this year. I have my sights set on a 65k in early November. I believe that this could be achievable. Of course, the one and only goal is to finish the race. It has a 17h cutoff and 2500m vertical gain. My overall plan would be something like:

Running

  • Set up a run schedule that is time based, that starts at the current level and adds 10-15% weekly time each month
  • Keep most of the effort low to build the base and resistance, sprinkle a bit of speed/hill/tempo work perhaps every two weeks or so to minimize the strain on the Achilles and I also don't like it :)

Cross-training

  • Keep the e-bike rides to complement the training or if the situation comes up, supplement the runs
  • Keep up with the strength training 2-4 times a week

Races and goals

  • 12k end of April
  • 30k early May
  • 10k early June (road)
  • 21k mid-June
  • 10k early August
  • 30k mid-September
  • 30k late September
  • 65k early November

The questions :)

  1. Am I mad in general?
  2. Is the 65k a plausible goal?
  3. Does the "training" plan make sense in general? Would there be a better way to go about it?
  4. Does the race calendar make sense? (The 30k in May seems quite ambitious but I really like the race and would love to go)
  5. Any other comments?

Thank you for your input in advance. I'm really excited about this already but I also need to know if I just set myself up to fail or if I'm missing something etc. I'm sure that all the experience this subreddit has will provide a lot of useful info to me.

Also, I would love to hear if there are any bigger guys out there about their experience in general. I think that some things can be missed by "normal" runners. At least that was my experience with my training plan last year, where we could probably avoid some things taking weight into more consideration. The plan is to lose quite a few kgs in the process but that is in the future. The situation at the moment is what it is.

edit: formatting and added vertical gain

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2 years ago