AHHHH!!!!! Marathon training has officially begun! I wrote this all over my personal Facebook, my Racing The States Facebook and Twitter last tuesday. I’ve also been extremely busy running around, working, hanging out with family and friends to the point that I haven’t had time for the blogging world. I haven’t worked on much posts and I’ve been neglecting my reading duties. But today, I caught up and am working on more posts.

Anyway, I have been reading Hal Higdon’s Marathon training book for the last month. In the back is a handful of training plans for the marathon. I was debating between the Novice 2 and Intermediate 1 plans. The difference between the two is there’s more rest days in novice 2. With the novice plan, you run just one weekend day, say a saturday, and sunday is “cross training” day and monday is a rest day. In the intermediate plan, you run a semi-long run on saturday and the real long run on sunday. Monday is still a rest day. Physically, I KNOW I can do the intermediate plan, however, time wise/schedule wise, I’m not sure the logistics would work, and I already realized that in the first week.

I actually had quite a fantastic week. I was in a pretty foul mood for the previous few weeks before due to unfortunate issues in my personal life, but the last two weeks has been pretty fantastically smile-inducing.

Monday: Technically this is when marathon training “started” but it was a rest day anyway. So it really did start Tuesday. However, I did not rest. I hiked Long’s Peak (my second 14er) for 12 hours with my friend David…more to come on that!

Top of Long’s Peak

Tuesday: 3 mile run. Actually, this felt fantastic. To be honest, I wasn’t going to run because I was pretty sore and injured from my hike. But I got home from work, sat on my bed for a little bit, and in just an instant, I decided to charge out the door. And that’s literally what I did. I tied my shoes and took off…powerfully! It felt great. Nice, strong run. Now, 3 miles is actually less than what I normally do. When I’m not training for anything and just maintaing my fitness level, I run 4 miles, 5-6 days a week. So three was easy-peasy.

Wednesday: 5 mile run. On a treadmill. Ew. But, the run itself fell fine. I felt strong; I just hate running on a treadmill for longer than, oh, about 1 minute, but the weather was volatile and raining/lighting off and on.

Thursday: 4 miles. According to my training schedule, I was only “supposed” to do 3 miles. But I wanted to run around the lake which is 4 miles to the lake, around and back. It was a perfect evening for a run. Nice and cool! It had sprinkled outside all day and cooled off the evening. It was another great run this week.

Friday: Rest day. I was supposed to have the whole day off from work, but had to go in for a few hours. After that my rest day consisted of shopping, hot tubing and date night. It was a pretty good rest day if I do say so myself.

Saturday: Since I was debating between the two training plans, my weekend runs were up in the air. This is where I notice the logistics might not work. Saturday was quite crammed. I worked until early afternoon, and once I got back I realized I didn’t have enough time to get a long run in (if I was going to do the intermediate plan, I would have done 5 miles). My dad was still in town but leaving sunday morning and since I didn’t get to spend much time with him during the week due to me being out and about and not staying still, we went to dinner and a movie. (By the way, I was super impressed with the new Batman movie). That night I “carb” loaded with some beers at the Boulder bars and hung out with some great company.

Sunday: BLAH! So I was “supposed” to do my long run on sat, but, as I explained just above, I moved it to this day. It was not a good run. 8 miles. I kinda walked it a little; it took me a lot longer than expected to finish it. First, I didn’t realize, but I started my run right as the Bronco game was getting out, which is a big deal when the stadium is in between my house and the trail I wanted. The first 15 minutes of my run were spent wading through angry bronco fans as I made my way to the trail. Also, It was little nerve racking on the trail I picked because this is the trail I got sorta attacked on (if you don’t know the story, click here). Even though I went the opposite way of where I was during the incident, it was still a little frightening. But I had my protective stuff with me. Lastly, it was HOT! UGH, just not a good run. Oh well. First long run of marathon training complete. The only good thing I got out of this run was this picture…any Coloradans know where this is!?! I have never seen this until on a run; it’s amazing what you find when you explore the city on foot.

Any Coloradans know where this is????

AND first week of marathon training complete. Only, what, like 17 more weeks to go! And I have a lot of good posts to write in mind coming soon!