It’s official

I mailed the form off weeks ago, my credit card was charged a few days ago and today I recieved my confirmation email. It’s official. I am registered for the marathon. This is real!

Marathon Training – Week 3 – Showers in the morning, rain in the afternoon

I woke up at 7am on Saturday and turned on NPR to hear the forecast for the day: “Showers in the morning, rain in the afternoon.” Hmmm, I’m not sure what the difference between “showers” and “rain” is but I’m pretty sure they both mean wet! I had a 12 mile run in front of me so I geared up in my rain jacket and grudgingly headed out the door. Once I got moving and warmed up and accepted that I was going to get wet I discovered that the rain wasn’t actually all that bad. There were lots of other runners out on the roads and seeing them toughing it out in the rain along with the occasional head nod and exhcange of “good morning” made me feel much better.

Saturday’s 12 mile run was not the farthest I’ve ever run (I’ll start setting new personal distance records in 2 weeks) but I thought there was a good chance it would end up being the longest run time-wise. In the end my time was 2:09:24 which is just slightly less time than my first half marathon in 2:10:42. My average pace was 10:47 min/mile. I would have liked to see that average over 11:00 min/mile but I’m pretty sure the slowing down will take care of itself as my long run distances increase!

Marathon Training – Week 2 – Winter running

I was in Toronto this past weekend and had my season’s first (and probably only) taste of winter running. The first of the weekend runs was an easy 5 miler on Friday in High Park. I set out in the late morning at -9C and immediately discovered that running on the north side of any street is preferable since more sunlight means clearer, dryer sidewalks. Normally I like to run on the trails in the park but on this day I stuck to the sidewalks becuase they were clear. I had a great time running by the outdoor hockey rink (shouldn’t those kids be at school?) and through the High Park zoo. Who knew they had bison and elk in there?

On Sunday morning I headed out for a 10 miler under a clear sky and a temperature of -11C (12F). I ran down to the lakeshore hoping that the wind wouldn’t be too bad and that I’d be able to find some sort of a trail to run on. After a few dead ends I did come upon a narrow trail that had been packed down by other runners and walkers. The footing wasn’t perfect but it was decent and it kept my pace moderate. I had a beautiful view of downtown Toronto (beautiful? Toronto? that sounds like an oxymoron coming from an Ottawa girl) and tried to embrace winter. I do miss snow living in Seattle. I was warm and comfortable until mile 8 when I stopped to take a gel and some water. I’m not sure if it was the short walk break, the 180 degree change in direction of if I had just reached my limit because from that point on my fingers were numb. Luckily the last 1.5 miles were on clear city sidewalk and I was able to pick up the pace and get home quickly to warm up. My last mile was done in 9:27!

All in all I was quite proud of myself for toughing it out and running in the cold. It’s not easy and I have the utmost respect for people who are able to train consistently in cold, snowy weather. I imagine that many if not most of my fellow Ottawa marathon participants will have trained through cold Canadian winters. That’s commendable in my books.

Marathon Training – Week 1 – It has begun

Well my first week of marathon training is in the books or, as I prefer to think about it, in the bank.

I believe that I showed a great deal of self restraint this morning and did not run the Love ‘Em or Leave ‘Em 5K. It was tempting to race since the run was close to home and I really enjoy doing organized races. However, after yesterday’s 8 miler doing a hard 5K today just sounded like a good way to hurt myself. Plus it seemed a little ridiculous to pay money to run the same path I run in training several times a week! This is an example of one of those times that I asked myself my current favourite question: “Is this in line with my goals?” Running a 5K today would not have been in line with my goals of ensuring I stay injury free and get adequate rest.

This leads me to the question of whether or not I will run any races between now and the marathon. I’m currently leaning towards no even though a lot of the reading I’ve done suggests that doing a race or two can serve as a good dress rehersal before the marathon. There are a few Seattle races I could do: St Patrick’s Day Dash (March 11), Mercer Island Half or 10K or 5K (March 25) or the Kirkland Half (May 13). I’m supposed to be doing an 18 miler the weekend of the Mercer Island Half and a 12 miler the weekend of the Kirkland Half. They’re both possible although I’d have to tack on more mileage to Mercer Island. The problem with Kirkland is that it’s only 2 weeks before the marathon and I’m scared that I’d go too hard and that could take away from my marathon. I suppose I could set an alarm on my Garmin to go off it I started runinng too quickly and really run it as an easy training run. We’ll see…

Marathon training starts tomorrow!!!

The Ottawa Marathon is 16 weeks from today which means that my marathon training program (pdf) starts tomorrow! I mailed in my registration form this morning and I am very very excited to get started.

I’m coming off a pretty good month of base training. January wasn’t too intense but I did log a total of 64.5 miles/103.8 km. They were all easy runs – no tempo runs or speedwork. If you add in the three runs I’ve done so far in February I’m up to a year to date (YTD) total of 76.5 miles/123.1 km. That’s not quite on pace to hit 1000 miles for the year but my mileage will be increasing big time during marathon training so I think I’ll catch up!

In keeping with tradition my first day of training is a rest day. Actually it’s an easy cross-training day but all I plan on doing is going to my 1 hour pilates class. That might not sound like rest but there’s no cardio component to pilates so it’s practically a rest day. I decided to do a pilates class this quarter because I think having a strong core will help me keep running upright late in the marathon and because none of the yoga classes fit my schedule! I’m not completely sold on pilates yet but I figure I’ll stick with it for the quarter and then evaluate it it’s something I want to continue with or not.

I think I’m all geared up for marathon training. My parents bought me a Garmin Forerunner 305 for Christmas and I absolutely love it. The real-time pace and distance feedback it great. Now I can just go out a run without having to premap a route to do a certain distance. The best part of the whole thing might be the graphs! When I showed my apartment-mate all the nifty graphs and maps I could make using the data downloaded from my Garmin he suggested that this might add a month to the time it takes me to complete my dissertation! It’s true that as a statistician I love data and could probably spend hours and hours doing analysis of my running data. Because I would eventually like to graduate I’m restricting myself to downloading data from my Garmin only once a week. Download day will probably be Sundays so I can see how I did for each week of training. I might try to include a few graphs/maps in my weekly training updates.

I am trying to be very realistic about my marathon goals. My primary goal is of course just to finish. For training purposes I’ve defined my goal marathon pace (MP) to be 10:00 min/mile. This equates to about a 4:22 marathon finish which is almost exactly double my first half marathon finish time. That may be overly optimistic but it makes calculating percentages of my MP very easy. For instance I’m going to try and run my long runs at about 10%-20% slower than my MP so that’s 11:00 min/mile to 12:00 min/mile. Nice and easy.

I’m warning you now, there’s going to be a lot of marathon talk on this blog for the next 4 months. I hope that you’ll enjoy experiencing this adventure with me because I’m pretty excited about the whole thing!

PS – I had the Super Bowl on in the backgroud while I worked on this post and it reminded me of the fact that I originally started this blog during the Super Bowl in 2002. So I went into the archives and yes, my blog turned 5 years old yesterday!