Saturday, 6 September 2014

Road to Athens

I will be running the original marathon course in Athens, Greece in a few months. I have been looking forward to it as we will be celebrating my run buddy's 40th birthday with this race. After running the San Francisco marathon, I decided I wanted to find a new training plan.  I was disappointed with my race in SF and wanted to do better.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, but all I knew was that I wanted to train better and race better for any up coming races.

A friend of mine recommended a book, Advanced Marathoning by Peter Pfitzinger. She had said that the plans inside were good and that the book had helped her out. I quicker downloaded the e-book and started to find a plan that would work for me.

After flipping through the book, I decided on the lowest weekly mileage plan. I took a week off after San Fran.  My legs felt pretty good after a week of no running, so off I went. I was 13 weeks out when I finally nailed down the plan and tried to do what I could. I felt that I was doing alright as I had just completed a marathon.  The first thing I noticed right off the bat was that I would be doing higher mileage runs in the middle of the week and the long run was actually much longer than what I had been used to. The plan starts off at 53 km (33miles) a week and increased to a peak of 88km (55 miles) a week. 

I am challenged by this new plan, but finding it hard to fit in all the runs. Since I started the new plan, I have run a 30km race where I did have a new personal best. I am excited yet terrified by the new training plan. I am now going into week 6 of the training plan and wondering how I will fit in all the running. We were hit with a blast of summer last week, so many of my runs were cut short or done on the treadmill. I'm hoping I have better luck this week.

I am excited to say that a close friend of mine will be running her first race ever. I will be running the entire 5km with her and will make sure she crosses the finish line. She has been training for a few months now and I am full of anticipation for her. I can still remember the excitement and nervous butterflies from my first race. I look forward to an awesome race day tomorrow.

Happy Weekend!!

How is your training coming along?

Do you have a coach or use training plans suggested in books/online?

Any tips for my friend for her first race?

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