A full marathon has been on my list of races to complete for quite some time now, and I've never gotten around to researching it some more until lately. I have 3 race goals for next year, 1) a full marathon, 2) complete a half iron-man, and 3) complete the Shenandoah Mountain 100 [100 mile mountain bike race], of course these are all stepping stones to my real race goal of completing a full iron-man the following summer. For those unaware, an Iron Man is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and 26.2 mile run. Yea.
It's very true that it if you have you eye on an event or race, the best thing you can do is to just sign up for it, because otherwise you'll keep putting off the training and then flake out and never sign up. By signing up first you force yourself to develop some sort of training schedule or regimen, so that you can put it a solid effort on race day. Welp, I'm officially signed up for my first marathon. It's going to be on Saturday March 17th, 2012, here in DC, and it's called the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon USA. I've heard of the Rock 'n' Roll marathon series before, but this is the first time it's coming to DC. I'm very excited and curious at the same time. Excited because I know I'll have to keep my butt in excellent shape all throughout the winter and excited to cross this one off the list, but nervous because I still don't know how it's going to feel when you're searching for strength as you pass mile marker 20, and realize you still have 6 more to go. But there's only one way to find out!
I've found a decent training schedule that lasts 18 weeks leading up to race day. That means that my training schedule starts in just over 2 weeks from now. The details of the schedule can be found here, and there's a screenshot of the mileage and corresponding week pictured below. I'm not going to be starting my training from scratch though, since I've remained fairly active and in shape this whole summer and fall. In fact yesterday I strapped on my trail shoes and got in two nice laps around Burke Lake totaling 9 miles, and a pace much faster than I anticipated on being able to run, encouraging! One day and run at a time though, and hopefully come March 18th, I'll have some excellent news to report!
Rough outline of training schedule. [Click to enlarge]
Yesterday's 9 mile trail run.
2 comments:
Good luck! You will do great! That training looks crazy...
You will do great, because you are so focused on what it takes to reach your goals! I'm nervous just thinking about this! Monday is going to be your favorite day of the week :-)
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