Marathon Training!

I made it through my entire first week of marathon training - without skipping a beat!  If you haven't noticed, I suck at sticking to a training plan, so this is a big accomplishment for me (yes, I know it's only been a week).

FINALLY, I'm extremely excited and motivated to run and train for this race - I attribute this mostly to having music again, and my sub 2 hour half marathon last weekend - or maybe 2010 is just my year, who knows! This whole week I've just felt like running, and haven't given in to the TV (even with my recently developed Dexter obsession) or let feeling a little tired get in the way.  Running hasn't felt like a chore; it's been a blast and I don't want to stop!

For my long run on Saturday, I even got myself out of bed at 4am to do a 10 mile TRAIL run with Jeff - woah, woah, woah!  Although this was really hard for me since I never run hills and we did about 1000 ft of climbing (yep, I walked a fair amount), it was a great change of scenery, and I had a ton of fun experiencing some trails...butt, you will thank me later.  Jeff also made sure to tell me I did well, and I'm not as scared for my hilly half marathon on Catalina in about a month.  And, I was done with my long run by 7:30 in the morning - NICE!

Anyway, I'm really excited that training for my first marathon is starting off on a nice, positive note!  I have some jitters about my first marathon so good vibes like this are definitely welcome.  I want this to be a fun first experience; not one that will make me hate the marathon.

If you're interested in the training plan I worked up - you can check out my mess of a spreadsheet here.

My plan is not set in stone since I have no idea what will and won't work for me quite yet.  For my first go at this marathon thing, I don't want to work on my speed or worry about being fast, or too slow - I really just want to finish, so my main focus is just to build up my mileage.  I do have a goal time hanging out in the very back of my head...but that's where it's going to stay.  I don't want to be unhappy or disappointed in myself if I don't reach that time; instead I want to be happy and proud for having run an entire 26.2 miles, no matter how long it takes.  I still have at least a good 10 years or so to worry about getting fast!

If I don't want to work on speed, why do I have 5 mile track workouts every other week?  I just really miss track, and think it'll be a good way to break up doing lots of long, slow runs all the time.  I hope to make these workouts fun and relatively easy - nothing to wear myself out or make me puke!  In high school track and cross-country we would do push-ups and crunches for time after each workout, so I implementing that into my training as well.  I hate doing core workouts and I don't see myself making time to do any sort of lifting, so this is a quick way to get some of those muscles moving as well - better than nothing!

I really hope this excitement and drive I've had over the past week doesn't fade anytime soon - or at all!  I really want my first marathon to be a success, but for that to happen, I definitely need to love what I'm doing!

Here's to 15 more weeks of training!  And special thanks in advance tweeps for your daily ecouragement ;-)