Today I hit something of a milestone in my training for the marathon, and I thought I would update the blogging community on how things have been going. It’s hard to believe, but according to the calendar, I just finished my 4th week of official training (it’s an 18 week training program).

Having said that, I haven’t done as much running during the first four weeks as I should have. From my first post about the marathon, you can follow a link that will describe the marathon training days in more detail with the number of miles that I should be running each day. But, to summarize, each week follows a pattern: Monday, crosstrain; Tuesday, low miles; Wednesday, medium miles; Thursday, low miles; Friday, off, Saturday, medium-ish miles; Sunday, long miles. My problem, however, is that I took off a week (the second week) and went to Breckenridge and skied. While some might think that skiing is good exercise, it apparently can’t compete with running, as far as keeping those muscles in good shape. When I got back from Breckenridge, it took me a few days to get back into the swing of things. I didn’t get in the long run that I had planned to do on the day I got back, and it took me a few more days to actually get back on track with the number of miles that I’m supposed to be doing.

Luckily, I think that I had enough of a running mindset before starting the official training that I’ll be ok. Anyway, fast forward to the present (or closer to it). Last weekend I ran 5 miles on Saturday at Marathon race pace, and 6 miles on sunday (at a slower pace, as is normal for the long run. Every 3 weeks during training you have a light long run. As we go through the weeks, the Sunday runs are (in miles): 8, 9, 6, 11, 12, 9, 14, 15, 11, 17, 18, 13…. You get the idea. So, last weekend was the 6. Today, though, I broke 10 miles. I went eleven, in fact. I didn’t run 11 miles straight. I took about 3 breaks, each 30 seconds long. The rest of the time I was running at 7 miles per hour. So, it took me a little over an hour and a half. Next week I do 12.

The run really wasn’t bad. I think I’ve definitely reached a point where my heart isn’t going to be much of an issue on the long runs. I feel like, heart-wise, I can run all day long at 7mph or so and not get winded. I could pretty easily hold a conversation at that speed. (the problem being, of course, that I’m hoping to run the marathon at 8mph, so we’ll see how that goes).

At about mile 10.1, I think I was starting to notice the lactic acid building up in my legs. This is the beauty of training. I’m assuming that, as I do more miles, that buildup will start showing up later and later. If it continues to start around 10 miles, I think I’ll be in trouble. But, I’m sure that the longer runs will take care of that for me. I finished running this morning about 8:20, and since then, my legs have felt kinda strange. I can tell that I’ve done some running on them. After eating lunch today I went to the department store and did some shopping, and I could feel my legs. They aren’t hurting.. they are just definitely there.

Anyway, that’s how the training is going. Fun times. I calculated that I burned about 1,300 calories this morning as I was plodding along. Kinda freaky. Last night I ate a big plate of spaghetti. I made a lot more than a single plate, though. I froze a reasonable sized portion that I might eat next saturday night or something. We’ll see how it goes.

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