Going the Distance

So I picked up Galloway's marathon book today to try and decide which of his programs to follow for the marathon and thought I should also break out the calendar to find out when I needed to start. Turns out, all of his programs are basically 26 weeks and the marathon is 25 weeks from today. Hmm. Looks like I am going to have to start to focus a little bit. That's cool, though, because I've been running pretty regularly and it will be nice to get a little more organized with my training.

His programs are split into a few basic categories: The Beginner Program, "To Finish" program, Fat-Burning Program, and Time-Goal Programs (4:40, 4:20, 4:00, 3:45, 3:30, 3:15, 2:59, or 2:39). I decided on the 2:39 program, because running for 2 1/2 hours sounds a hell of a lot better than running for 6 hours. But it turns out, to run it in 2:39, you just have to run quite a bit faster, the race isn't actually any shorter. So I guess I will do the "To Finish" program instead. It doesn't look like there will be any problem starting on the second week (actually, the third week since the weeks run from Monday to Sunday). The last day of week 2 is a long run of 4 miles and I did that tonight. I read somewhere that running is not very much fun when you first start out, and I am a living testament to that. For weeks now, everytime I ran, my knees hurt, my feet hurt, and my hips hurt. I couldn't run very far and I damn sure couldn't run very fast. But the last couple of weeks, I feel like I have turned a corner, and I am starting to enjoy the process. My 4 mile run tonight was a perfect example. I drove out a 4 mile route before I took off, and it sure seemed like a long way. But once I got going, the time really seemed to fly. I started off walking for the first 5 minutes to get loosened up, and then alternated 3 minutes of running with 2 minutes of walking for the rest of the 4 miles. Actually, the last 15 or 20 minutes, I probably only walked 3 or 4 minutes. I ended up completing the run in about 55 minutes, which is a little under a 15:00 pace. It was actually a little faster if you don't count the 5 minute warm up. On long run days, the pace should be about 2 minutes/mile slower than normal pace anyway, so that was fine.

I've been done now for probably 4 hours, and I feel great. I feel like I could go out right now and run again! It is really strange, because it has been awhile since I have felt this way. It is still hard to imagine what it will feel like after losing another 40 pounds or so. I will lay out the schedule for next week soon, but for now, tomorrow I need to walk/cross train for 40 minutes. Piece of cake....