First Week of Marathon Training

I will be running the Marine Corps Marathon again this October. I've decided to follow the PFitz 18/55 plan. While I am very nervous to be putting in such high mileage weeks, I'm excited to see the results. Secretly, I would love to finish as close to 4 hours as possible. That is a big jump from my marathon last year so I don't know if it's possible. I think I will finish around 4:15 but anything can happen on race day. This past year, I've gained a lot of speed, especially knocking 2 minutes off my 5k times in only 6 months. I also improved my 5 mile time by over 4 minutes since last summer. I'm hoping that I will be successful with my speed in the marathon as well.

Philly Distance Run in September is going to be a training run for speed. My goal is anything under 2 hours, but I should come in the 1:50's. I am looking very forward to that race as well.

As of now, I'm just going to train and do my best. It is a lot easier for me to do my long runs because my mom is training with me. Having her to train with gives us each great company, and forces us to get the runs in. We push each other the entire run.

This week of marathon training was somewhat of a success. Today we set out to run 12 miles, but only made it to a little over 5. It was 100% humidity and 94 degrees at 8:30 am. All the runners on the boardwalk were having difficulty. I'm not worried because I was able to move around the schedule this week to get in all of our miles.

We leave for vacation in 2 weeks and I was able to tweak that week a little bit as well. I knew there was no way we could have a 50+ on a cruise ship. But we will still get in 4-5 days of running and the week is around 30 miles so it should all work out.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that training goes well and we stay injury free :) Between running and teaching a few classes a week at the gyms, my knees are giving me some trouble. I just have to take it easy when I feel like I need a break.