Marathon Training: Week 1

The first week (of 16 weeks) of marathon training is complete! Of course training starts out easier and gets harder/longer as we go, but so far things are looking good.

Check out my schedule above- yellow means I’ve done it and pink means I rested (as for Wednesday, I rested and then made up for the skipped strength a later day in the week).

One of the toughest parts of training is going to be making time. Out of the 16 weeks ahead, I’m going to be out of town for about 5-8 of those weekends, meaning I will have to plan ahead on where and when I’ll be able to run.

This weekend I was up in New Hampshire for a friends wedding and got some route advice from the marathoner bride before heading up there. She gave me a 5 mile out and back to do so Saturday morning while our house of 18 was still asleep, I woke up at 7:45am to hit the trail. And wow, what a trail it was. I was told I’d be doing a run around a lake but actually I didn’t hit the lake until mile 4 and until then I was actually (unknowingly) running around a mountain. It was by far the hilliest run I’ve ever done in my life and my knees were feeling it. I think that Central Park is hilly and this was like Central Park times 10. The hills were way bigger and there were many more of them. My pace was slower than normal because of the hills and also I was nervous heading out as I haven’t done a 10 mile run in many many months. So when the run was finally over I was proud of myself for getting up early, getting it done and surviving all the hills.

Pictures from along the route: Me before starting the run, most of the run looked like picture 2 but then I finally hit the beautiful lake and was table to take in the views miles 4-6, plus I passed this beautiful house for sale along the lake at mile 5 (will someone buy this for me? thanks!).

Ok Week 2- here we go!