How do I plan on training for the Spartan Beast?  First, I have to attack my weakness, which is endurance running.  Going from 3.5 miles as a max to around 12 over a period of 6 weeks is not going to be easy.  I am very sensitive to over-training and my biggest fear is that I will injure myself and knock me out of the race.  That would be very, very, very bad for me.  Not only do I need to be able to run 12 miles, this race is on a mountain and I’m sure the route will be extremely difficult. 

For almost 2 years my exercise regimen has been 3 strength days, 2 cardio/plyo days, yoga, and a stretch/rest day.  I don’t want to deviate from that too much…can’t afford to lose progress with building lean muscle.  I have decided that my 2 cardio days will now be run days, with Fridays being the “long” run day.  I will probably add some shorter runs or sprints in on one of my strength days, but again I don’t want to overtrain my legs.  Spartan Race publishes some Workouts of the Day, which can be heinous, but more or less about the same difficulty level as my regular routines.  I need to choose a few of those to add to the schedule.  The tricky part is to put them in the routine where they don’t overstress a particular area of my body.

With the running part, I started with a 3.5 mile run and then went to 5.7 (~50 minutes).  I’m going to try to add about 15-20 minutes and 2 miles per week.  My neighborhood where I run has some pretty good hills, very little flat spaces so that helps.  However, at some point I need to run some trails and I have my mind set on running up a very steep hill from the river, which is 1.8 miles in distance.