...until my first marathon! I've always figured I'd do one sometime or other, so a couple of months ago I felt like I needed a personal challenge that broke the monotony of stay-at-home-motherhood and decided why not now?
So far training is going well. I have some nagging IT bands (knee) that like to get tight, but nothing that ice isn't keeping under control. This is impressive to me because I always get hurt when I run on treadmills, but because of the summer heat and a lack of childcare, I'm having to do a lot of my running in the gym where they will take my kiddos.
I'm doing a local training program, though I haven't actually started doing my long runs with them (apparently for Nov. marathons, you don't actually need to really increase your mileage substantially til end of July/beginning of August). But the great thing about this training program is that I'm learning a lot of interesting tidbits about running.
1) The less noise you hear when your foot strikes the road, the less pounding you're putting on your body. This is totally obvious, but I never knew that before.
2) The most common cause of shin splints after bad shoes is over-striding (taking too long of a stride). For every 20 seconds, one foot should land on the ground 30 times. This is easy to count when you run.
3) Hydration belts are awesome. I haven't been drinking anything on my long runs until this past week when I got a Nathan hydration belt. It was amazing, and it made 12 miles feel like a breeze.
4) The closer your long run gets to being 50% of your miles for the week, the likelihood you'll get injured goes way up.
5) The best treadmill ever is a Woodway. It is unlike any other treadmill I've been on. It's full suspension with rubber treads and feels like you're running on air.
6) Running at a 0% incline on a treadmill is like running on a .5% negative slope outside, so I always set my incline to at least 1%.
7) The first mile should always be your slowest, and the first 3 miles of a marathon should be your slowest.
The training program has all these pace charts about your marathon potential based on your average long run pace, and a two mile time trial. It's fascinating, but I feel like it's baloney. I can't imagine finishing in less than 4:30 but the pace charts say my race potential is closer to 4. Riiiight.
Probably the most helpful thing about the training program is that I have to fill out a detailed daily training log so it is keeping my nose to the grindstone and me on target to meet my weekly mileage targets. Right now I'm at 30, but I think the goal is to be at 55 before November.
