Week 1 Recap

Here we go, folks. Attempt #1,271 of a marathon cycle. AGAIN. Let's keep our fingers crossed that I make it through more than a mere 2 weeks or so.

Starting with last week, I've got 12 weeks until my next marathon: The Sun Health Arizona Marathon. So, I figured that was plenty of time to get myself into half-way decent shape. My goals as of right now, are: 1. To finish and 2. To Finish under 4:30. 

So, that means that I need to actually attempt to train. I feel like I trained OK for the Oklahoma City Marathon back in April, and the wind killed me and I still managed to run a 4:46. Soooooo. Hopefully a sub 4:30 can be in the cards for me in 12 short weeks.

Am I following a training plan? Nope. Am I being coached? Nope. I don't think I'm quite ready for either one of those right now. But, my plan is to slowly increase my weekly mileage and eventually get to a point where I'm focusing on 3 runs a week. (Similar to the FIRST training plan thought process).

Typically, I run twice a week with my buddy Steve. He is WAY faster than me and we generally run faster than I normally would on my own. As the weeks go on, I'm going to start using my runs with him for tempo runs, etc. But, for right now, I'm just calling my runs with him as "steady state" runs. Which, to me, means... running slight faster than comfortably hard. I'm not officially timing the runs, but, I do keep an eye on when I hop in and out of the car, so, I have a general idea.

The other key run of the week, is the Long Run. Which, I hope to incorporate "fast" miles in every week. You'll see what I mean as we go along.

So, here is how Week 1 shaped up:

Mon: Off

Tues: 5 miles around 9:40 pace with Steve. (I was still recovering from a cold, so, we took it easier than normal).

Wed: Off

Thursday: 5 miles around 9:15 pace.This run felt fantastic.

Friday: 3 mile run and 2 mile walk after

Saturday: 10 miles at a 9:15 pace with my drill sergeant Bitch, Melissa. Seriously, she saved my butt on the run and pushed me to get this run done at that pace. I was thrilled!

Sunday: 3.5 mile recovery run. This FELT like a recovery run, which was kind of nice. Been a long time since I've felt like that.

So, I'm starting out slow and I can't say that my mileage will ever hit the 50-60 mpw range. But, I'm just going to do the best I can and hopefully bump up my weekly mileage and get to a point where my recovery runs can be a little longer as well.