Marathon Training Update #1

Since my new year’s resolution in early January to run a marathon this year, I have steadily ramped up my running training. In general its going very well and overall I have a three step approach to a strong finish after 26.2 miles in October. (1) regularly go to the gym for weight training to improve my overall strength to allow me to stay injury free; (2) train hard for the Indianapolis half marathon which will hopefully yield a good time which I can then use to get a seeded starting position for the marathon and (3) start marathon training in earnest in June and build up slowly to several 15-20 mile training runs (yikes)!

So far it’s going well and I have have registered for Chicago! I have gone to the gym at least one a week since January and really feel that I’m stronger. With only 6 weeks to go before the Indy half marathon I’m in pretty good shape. I have run four long training runs over 10 miles and in March alone I have run over 100 miles, another yikes, and since starting to log all my runs in 2007, I have never before hit that milestone. Generally I do three runs a week, a long run, a tempo run (the pace I wish to run the half marathon at) and interval running to increase speed (several very short runs 0.5-1.0 miles at a much faster pace).

All this training is also good for me (my knees aside). I feel like I have a lot more energy, I tend to eat better, drink less and as a result I have dropped about 15lbs. So, stay tuned, I’ll let you all know how my half marathon goes on 06 May!

I did wish to add a photo here too, however, to save you all from an awful picture of a sweaty me running along in some race (again), I did a quick image search of “running on beer”. Below is a sampling of the result. Now, I ran 6 miles today so I’m off for a beer.