Two runs this week plus the usual elliptical and Lifecycle crosstraining. There was a short midweek run, 3.5 mi at 8:30 pace, and the long Saturday 15K race at Coronado. I had no trouble restraining the 15K to training pace (as it turned out, 9:17/mi instead of a typical 15K race pace of 9 min/mi). That was partially because I got talked into participating in a "family bike ride" the day before. Translation: 26 mi as fast as I could go without risking injury. I have more endurance than my husband and son, but not the leg strength, so I have to ride at nearly my top speed to keep up with them. After 26 mi around the Coronado bay, half of it into the wind, my knees and thigh muscles were stiff and a bit sore. And the hotel we were staying at was a residential-style with no ice machines, so no ice. At least I resisted the siren song of the hot tub that evening. Fortunately my legs recovered pretty well overnight. On race morning I double-taped my knees and also taped my hamstrings, and they came through quite nicely, with no pain and only slight stiffness. I did finish 8th of 26 in my age group without trying. Tomorrow will be an easy crosstraining day.

2 weeks done, 16 to go. Are we there yet? Just kidding.

I was on a business trip this past week, so got to do several workouts bright and early in the hotel gym. Fortunately the gym was well equipped; had several treadmills, ellipticals and bikes in good working order. Since I was at about 1 mile altitude, I was going a bit slower than usual and had to roughly calibrate effort. I then did the long run (9.5 mi) back home on Friday since I was off work that day. It was relatively warm, so I ended up doing a little slower than I'd planned; about 9:30/mi. I ran in a different location than usual, about 10 mi from home, on flat ground for a change instead of rolling hills. However, the flip side is that these roads were rather heavily crowned, so I had to keep switching directions. I will go back to the rolling hills next week since I'm used to them. I've also started using a Nathan water belt for the long runs so I don't need to continually route past water fountains.  The Speed 2 holds 20 oz total and it fits remarkably well.

The last 2 weeks have been good typical baseline weeks. They've been relatively generic; between running, elliptical and Lifecycle, equivalent of about 35 mi/week (taking 60 min crosstraining as the rough aerobic equivalent of a 10K run; elliptical is the harder crosstraining and the bike is easy/moderate). Long run was 8 mi (about 8:45 pace) last week and 7.5 mi (about 8:35 pace) this week.

As for the 18 weeks of Novice I, it technically starts tomorrow, although I probably won't notice much till about week 4-5. For the first 3 weeks of Novice I, the long runs are only 6, 7 and 5 mi, so instead I'll do my usual 7-9 mi long run those weeks. The Novice I long run in week 4 will be 9 mi.

Hi, I'm Carol (crl8686). I've been running almost entirely 5Ks and 10Ks since 1986. Then after three 15Ks and two half marathons, I finally decided, at age 52, that it's time to go conquer the marathon beast. So I decided to set up a blog to chronicle some of my experiences. 

I'm not exactly screaming fast, but I usually race the 5K in about 25-26 min, and the 10K in about 52-53 min these days. Based on a half marathon PR of 2:00:50, the McMillan tables predict I should be able to do about 4:15 for the full (that's about 9:45 pace). Realistically, however, that's probably optimistic since this will be my first marathon. Let's see: at 10:15 pace we're talking about 4:30 for the full. I'd be delighted with 4:30. Hey, I'd be delighted with anything under 5 hr (that's about 11:15 pace). OK, I'd be happy with ANYTHING that gets me to the finish line physically and mentally intact.

So I negotiated with my husband and son to scratch out the time needed for decent training - a Novice I program. I'm not a newbie, I'm at Intermediate level, and normally I would train at Intermediate and race for time. However, for a first marathon I decided to drop down to Novice. I don't have a large amount of spare time to train - I work full time as an engineering manager and then have to deal with all the usual family commitments. So I did some Web research and decided on Hal Higdon's Novice I program. Then I marked it up to accommodate the high % of crosstraining that I do, and to fit a bit better into my schedule. So it's 18 weeks and counting. 18 weeks starts June 8. Target is the Long Beach (CA) Marathon on Oct 11. Long Beach is local for me - about 40 miles away - and I've done its half marathon twice, so I'm familiar with much of the course and the associated logistics.

More to come - I'll try to keep this reasonably updated.