Tuesday, August 22, 2006

19 weeks, 4 days, 22 hours and 36 minutes and counting....

Well I decided to keep a blog on my progress, training thoughts and such toward running my first marathon. It is the type of journey I want to remember, and perhaps others can relate to it too as they may have taken similar adventures in their life.

As I look at the countdown clock on my computer, it is just over 19 weeks away until the start of the 2007 Disney World marathon on January 7, 2007 - my first. Reminds me of my first half marathon, also at Disney, back in 2004. That was an exciting time as I know this will be. What is different this year is the amount or preparation I am going through before this race. For that first half marathon, I trained some, but in the end had not fully trained, and although I participated anyway, and finished, I could get away with that since it was just 13 miles. This time, 26.2 miles, twice the distance, will take some discipline to prepare for - and I have been training hard since I returned from vacation this year.

I am blogging this morning after having finished one of the best 5 mile runs I have done. It is fun to think that 5 miles used to be my long run. Now it is becoming part of my regular mid week runs. It still takes me almost an hour, however! The hardest part of training, for me, is getting up at 5:45 am while it is still dark, and getting out the front door. The second hardest part is the first mile and a half - but once I warm up, by the time I get back, I feel pretty good and I ALWAYS am glad I ran.

To wrap up this first blog post, I wanted to write about running with my ipod. I think I found what seems to work well on the run. During the first half I listened to a podcast - actually the irunningradio.com podcast. It is easy to focus on the podcast and not how tired I am feeling. Then at the halfway point I cranked up the tunes. It worked well. When I started with music I felt obligated to run hard with the music right up front. I guess I am still waking up at the start of my run and need to give my body a chance to wake up!

Well, time to get off to the rest of my real life.....

1 comment:

MarathonChris said...

Thanks, sis. I can't imagine running 8 miles 4 times a week (maybe in a couple more months). It is hard to find the TIME to do that....4 miles takes me about 45 minutes.

Some day, you and I will run a marathon together. You just let me know when you are ready! :-)