Marathon Training: Report 13

After mulling over the last month's training, reading about other people's experiences with marathon training, studying various beginning marathon training schedules and pondering quite a bit, I have come up with this basic schedule:

Monday: Easy run (3-4 miles) and light weight training
Tuesday: Harder run with speedwork or tempo work or hills (5-7 miles)
Wednesday: Spin class at the gym with light weight training either this day, or the next
Thursday: Swimming at the gym with a possible short run (2-3 miles) and/or weight training
Friday: Easy run (3-4 miles)
Saturday: Long run

Am I overdoing it? Maybe. We'll see. I went from running 5 days a week to running 3 days a week, and now I'll run 4-5 days a week, with 2 crosstraining days and a little bit of weights. I'm hoping the crosstraining will help me raise my fitness level another notch without overdoing the running itself. I'm going to stick with this for the next four weeks, and then evaluate again to see if I need to change things up at all.

I've had a strong start to my new plan this week. Both yesterday and today I got up early enough to finish my runs by 6:55 and 7:02 respectively, so I could start right in on getting kids ready for school.

Yesterday I ran 4 easy miles in 43:04.

Today I ran 7 miles in 1:08:16. I started with 1 mile to warm-up and then did three sets of the following: 1.5 miles at a 9:14 pace followed by a half mile recovery at about a 10:50 pace. I sprinted a little in the last half mile just because I wanted to. Not sure that was wise, but it was empowering at the moment!

The next three Saturdays I'll be running 16 miles, 18 miles, and 20 miles, and I am feeling rather intimidated about that. I keep trying to remind myself that I've been gradually building up my endurance for months, and if I could handle a freezing 14 miler, I can do these increasing distances.

But I'm still a little scared.


Happy running!