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October 22, 2005
Week No. 2
REASON NO. 25 FOR RUNNING A MARATHON
Running a marathon is on my list of "things to do" during my life.
Most of my adult life, I have had a list of "things to do" running in the back of my mind. From taking a ride in a jet fighter plane, to travel to exotic locations, to physical challenges. As I am approaching (or slamming into) the dreaded "middle age", I am starting to realize that time moves very quickly, and if I do not start crossing some of these things off my list, they may very well not get done.
It is very easy to get caught up in the daily routine - work, family, and community stuff. Then, the next thing you know ten years have slipped by, and your list is still there, with no new entries, and nothing "checked off".
This completes my second week of training. Tuesday was a gym workout, with a 1/2 mile swim to warm up, then 3 miles on the treadmill at a 10 minute/mile pace. Wednesday was an early morning (meaning Dark)3 mile run around the orchards in Durham. Thursday was another gym workout, with some light weights and ab work, 30 minutes on the spinning bike, then a 3 mile treadmill run.
Friday was a planned rest day - Thank God. My feet and legs were really sore on Thursday and Friday. Even though I have been running almost 4 years, I usually have a rest day in between runs. All the training plans I have been reviewing require running on three consecutive days - I'm sure to provide additional "toughness" for your body.
I have adopted a new training plan - from Hal Higdon's website www.halhigdon.com I have taken the novice marathoner's plan, and somewhat tweaked it a little - to lengthen out the wednesday runs, and to add in cross training. One of my biggest challenges will be to try to maintain my other sports (biking and swimming) while cranking up the mileage for the marathon.
Saturday I had planned a long run - but given that I was still pretty sore, I pushed this back to Sunday. I'm almost finshed with Hal's book, and he constantly reinforces how important it is to listen to your body, and not force the runs if you are in pain. Doing so is a certain recipe for injury, especially for us "seasoned" runners.
Finally, the long run. The long run is the culmination of my workout
week, and a good run leaves me physically and physologically ready to tackle the next week. A bad run, however, does just the opposite. I was a little apprehensive about this one, given that I had pretty quickly ramped up my mileage these last few weeks. After reviewing my plan, I decided upon a simple 8 mile run - to make sure that I did not push myself too far, this early in the program. I plotted out the run using an internet program called map-24 www.us.map24.com This is an incredible program, it is free, and allows me to point and click to determine the distance between any points that I may want to run.
I plotted out a run from my house, north to several miles north of Durham. I took a freezer bottle 2/3 full with ice, and topped it off with the new Endurance Gatarade, and took a chocolate power bar and two gels with me.
The run started out a little squirrly, as I had the usual aches and pains the first couple of miles. Around mile 4 my knees started hurting just a bit, so a walked for a minute at the turn around point. Took off again, and suddenly everything clicked and felt good. The back 4 miles were over before I knew it. This is what I had wanted for my last run of the week. Even though this was less than a third of the distance I will run during the race, todays run gave me a great level of confidence that I will be able to finish 26.2 miles come race day.
Total time running was one hour and 27 minutes, which works out to about a 10.8 minute mile. Not speedy by any stretch, but these training runs are not necessarily supposed to be fast.
After a quick shower, we went into Chico for a large Jamba Juice and a sourdough Pretzle. One huge reward of running is that I can now eat just about anything (within reason) and not worry about weight gain.
Posted by Dennis at October 22, 2005 08:35 AM
Comments
Hi Dennis. One of my friends lives in your area and forwarded your blog to me. It seems we have something in common, a touch of insanity that leads us to want to run 26.2 miles in one day.
Here is a link to my blog:
http://bigedthebad.blogspot.com
I've been running for a long time, it's seems to be one of those things I was built for although I think running is truly something anyone can be good at. I was in the Army for 20 years and have tried to stay fit over the years since I retired but I always seem to do "better" when I have a goal. Like you, running a marathon was one of those things on my list and since I turned 51 in August, I decided I better do it before age and the effects of time make it any harder.
There are a lot of parallels between how we went about this. I also had been working out three times a week with a break between each workout but wasn't making the progress I felt I should. I found a training plan at http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_4/130.shtml which fit my timetable and schedule perfectly. I have been absolutely amazed at the progress I've made since switching to this plan.
My marathon is on Febuary 19. I'm going to run the Freescale Marathon here in Austin.
Good luck. I'll be keeping up with your progress as we go along to our respective events.
Posted by: Big Ed at October 26, 2005 10:58 AM
Hi Ed,
Ahh, so there is at least one other insane person in this world, that wants to torture themselves and then document the torture!!!
Good Luck with your Marathon and your blog. I'm still trying to work out the blogging bugs on my end.
Posted by: Dennis at October 27, 2005 06:08 AM