Week 1--A solid start

We have finished week 1 of training! It is undoubtedly a small step on a very long road ahead, but we are purposely starting slowly and building the miles over 30 weeks to increase our chances of finishing the race healthy and strong.

In the past, Chris and I have had very different methods of training for a marathon. His was to start running, keep running until he got tired, then turn around and run back home. The distance could be 3 miles or 13 miles depending on how he felt that day; he might hit the pavement 5 times per week or once a month depending on his schedule. And for whatever reason, this training style worked for him, getting him across the finish line 4 times.

When I decided to run a marathon in 2002, I bought a book. I have found when it comes to exercise, I do much better if a) I have a goal and b) I have a concrete plan to achieve that goal. Left to my own devices, I'm likely to come up with any excuse in the book to avoid getting out there. A lot of the books/plans I found seemed very complicated (what's a fartlek?!?) and also demanded a great deal of time--6 days of running with up to 70-80 miles per week. When you run a 10-minute mile, that's a lot of hours on your feet. The plan I found was very simple and designed for someone just like me, a recreational runner who just wanted to finish the race in one piece. And it worked perfectly. I'd be using the book this time around except I gave it to a friend in TX, thinking I'd never be nuts enough to attempt another marathon. Ha on me, I guess.

Luckily, Team Fisher House provided us with a few recommended, time-proven training plans. One was by Jeff Galloway; he advocates a run/walk program that has worked for thousands of marathoners. There are two main reasons I did not choose one of his plans: 1) he has you cover 26 miles before the race, which to me is asking for trouble, especially since 99% of other plans indicate you will do just fine covering 18-22 miles as your longest run, and 2) he wants you to walk/run or run/walk, when Chris and I are in agreement that we would like to just plain RUN. Well, JOG might be the better word, I guess.

I ended up choosing a method by Hal Higdon called Novice Supreme. This is a 12-week program designed to get you up to 6 miles followed by an 18-week marathon plan. I picked this for a few reasons. First, we coincidentally had about 30 weeks until the race when we signed up so it would fill the time perfectly. Second, while technically we may not be first-time marathoners, our running has been sporadic enough that I figured we would be safer training like beginners. Third, if we are being completely honest, we have only been running consistently again for about 2 months, and never much longer than 3 miles 3-4 times per week. We are just not really ready to jump whole hog into intense long-distance running.

Hal's plan has us running 4 days per week, with one extra day of walking or cross-training. There are no fancy workouts with weird names, just putting in the miles. Our longest run before the big day will be 20 miles. Another aspect of the program I like is that he builds mileage for a few weeks, and then backs it off again to give you a chance to "recover" slightly. I will be following this plan to the letter as much as possible, Chris probably less so--partly because of his work schedule (he may miss runs some days) and partly because he will most likely be able to succeed however he chooses to train. We both prefer it when we can run together so we are going to try for that as much as possible.

So here is what we did this week:

Tue. 4/3      1.63 miles in 15:44
Wed. 4/4     1.99 miles in 20:35 (Chris had to miss this one)
Thu. 4/5       1.52 miles in 16:01
Sat.  4/7       3.02 miles in 30:18
Sun. 4/8       1.63 miles in 34:54 (hike/walk on mountain)

Total miles    9.79

Aside from the "long run" on Saturday, these runs were all shorter than our usual, but hopefully this will keep us from falling into the deadly trap of TMTS (Too Much Too Soon) which has ended many a marathon dream. Slow and steady wins the race!

Thank you for reading and I'll catch you all next week!