Yikes, I’m going to run a Marathon

I have been racing for many years now. I have done lots of triathlons, swim and running races. The longest race I have ever run was a half-marathon. I always thought this was a good thing, a half marathon is a good challenge, but it is manageable. After close to 2 hours of running I always felt that I was ready to stop and didn’t feel the need to turn around and run the same course again to complete the full marathon. I am an average runner and in triathlon my skills get weaker with each subsequent event; swim, bike, run.

Since we started living in San Diego I have begun to hang out with a lot of girls that run marathons and seem to enjoy running them. Although some of these ladies are crazy fast, some are not, and run at my pace. So I thought, if they can do it, why can’t I?

I wasn’t looking for a marathon to run. I was planning my schedule for the coming year and deciding which races, running or triathlon, I wanted to do later in the year. Lots of people had told me about the Nike Womens Marathon, a notoriously difficult race to get into as it is so oversubscribed because the lucky ones that finish it get a Tiffany’s necklace on the finishing line. I debated whether I should enter the full or half marathon when I put my name into the drawing. Knowing it was unlikely I would be selected, I decided to let fate decide and entered the marathon. To my complete surprise my name came out of the drawing and now I was signed up to run a marathon in October! I had to re-read the email from Nike several times just to make sure it wasn’t a hoax. 

After a weekend to digest the news and discuss my new venture with Alan (he has an amused grin on his face whenever we talk about me doing a marathon) I sat down to write myself a training plan. I haven’t been running much for the last 2 months, only 1-2 runs a week and those were short at 3-4 miles. It will be a long way to the 26.2 miles in October.

My training started officially on Monday. The first month is about increasing my mileage, getting an endurance base and getting my legs used to regular running again. So far, so good. The runs have felt good so far, very slow but my body is happy and so am I. My appetite has increased back up and I think my tummy is already getting flatter (I know that is probably my imagination but it makes me feel good anyway!).

I’m planning to keep a blog of my experiences for the next 5 months, hopefully I’ll have something more interesting to report than “went for another run today”, but there may be some of that too! See you next week!

Corina