Day 36 - Marathon Training Begins!

I ran my first 5k at Limestone Race Weekend in late April of 2012.

I ran my first 10k, the Wolfe Island Classic, on July 1st 2012.

I ran my first half marathon, the Canadian Evening Half-Marathon, September 1st 2012 in Ottawa.

Today I started training for my first marathon.

I will be running May 26th 2013, during the Ottawa Race Weekend, just over a year after I ran my first 5k. My only goal is to finish without walking.

I'm pretty pumped.

There is patchy ice covering just about every surface outside, so I took it to the treadmill and ran 6k (I think...Resolutioners had taken every metric machine in the building, so I had to do some on-the-fly calculations). Even with my muscles still sore from the past couple of days (what did I do???), it felt good.

I felt strong.

I ran without stopping, except for a brief coughing break that reminded me that I'm not 100% over this cold yet.

Uh...I think 4 miles is about 6k...

I couldn't have done this a year ago. In fact, when I started running regularly, around March of 2012, I wasn't able to run longer than a minute or two at a time. I was painfully embarrassed during Dragonboat practice when it seemed like everyone else could effortlessly complete our runs around the short loop at City Park. I would slowly jog as far as I could and stop to walk, running again when I caught my breath. I was always the last to finish the loop and the team would wait for me so that they could start the subsequent bodyweight training interval. I wasn't exactly in the best shape of my life, but even when I was in excellent shape and would be sent out on a run with my synchro team, I would lag behind, feeling like I was dying while my lungs burned.

I started running after I had my shoulder surgery; it was really the only physical activity I could do without too much pain or risk of undoing the yet-unsolidified good work my surgeon had done.

It can be hard to get started in running, but I used the Couch to 5k program, and found that it helped me progress to running a full 5k in a little less than the promised 9 weeks. I notice they have an app now, so if you're interested in getting started, you may want to check that out. There's also a lot of great support out there for beginning runners, including the great communities at r/c25k and r/running.

By the time I ran my first 10k, I was training for a half-marathon, but I've since learned that there are Bridge to 10k programs out there for runners who have completed the C25K program and want to move toward longer distance. There's also a subreddit for that.

For half-marathon and marathon training, I've been using a training plan Amy used for her half and full marathon training and passed on to me, but there are plenty of programs out there for runners who want to move toward 21.1k and 42.2k - Hal Hidgon's training programs seem to get the most respect from the recreational running world. 

My big finish at the Canadian Evening Half-Marathon

Ultimately, I'd love to get into ultrarunning, but at the moment I'm too scared to even look into how one trains to run back-to-back marathons!