Adventures in Marathon Training

I ran my first marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2008.  My friend Chandula and I did a lot of our training runs together, which was helpful in terms of motivation (i.e., I was more likely to get up at 6am to run before class if I knew she was outside waiting for me).  Overall it was a pretty great experience; I moved way out of my comfort zone and accomplished something that I had never before even imagined I could do, and so far people have yet to stop being impressed with me (except for people who have also run marathons, but luckily for me and my ego there aren't too many of those in my life!).  But I hadn't originally intended on making running a long-term thing.  The marathon had been a fun challenge to work through, but in the following days when I was taking ice baths and hobbling to my classes because I could barely move, I told myself that I was done with running.

This turned out to be not particularly true, however, at least not for a while.  A couple of weeks after the marathon, my soreness had faded but my motivation hadn't.  Before graduating that spring I completed a half-marathon and a 10-miler.  When I moved to Boston for grad school I did lapse a bit but still managed to do a fun 5K, a 4-miler through Central Park at midnight on New Year's Eve, and an insanely fun obstacle race called The Warrior Dash. 

Never before had the world seen such bad-assery. 

After graduation, however, I pretty much stopped running.  I think maybe it was because I took time off from working out to focus on writing my thesis, and I just fell out of the habit.  I did eventually pick up other forms of exercise, but for the next year and a half I ran only very sporadically.  But right about the time I found out I would be moving to Hawaii, I saw a flyer for the Honolulu Marathon.  I decided right then and there that I was going to run it.  I remember the months right after the Marine Corps Marathon, when banging out a 5-miler seemed like nothing.  I'm definitely not there anymore, but I want to get back.

So last Monday I started training.  I'm following a 16-week training program that's outlined in The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer.  This is the guide I used to train for my first marathon, and I really found it helpful.  It's really good for people who are completely new to running because the authors start right from the beginning, and they discuss both the physical and mental/emotional aspects of training for and running a marathon.

I thought that training this time around would essentially be a repeat of last time, but some new issues have come up that I need to work through.  Firstly, I somehow didn't consider that running in the morning might be difficult when I have to be up at 6:30 in order to leave my house at 7:30, unlike when I was in school and didn't have to be anywhere before 9:30.  Also, where I am it doesn't really get light until about 5:45 anyway (I don't like to run in the dark), so getting up earlier wouldn't do much for me.  Secondly, I live in a small residential area that's almost completely surrounded by highways and narrow, shoulder-less roads that are somehow supposed to be 2-way.  Not really pedestrian-friendly.  By doing things like running up and down several dead-end streets I've managed to fit a 3-miler, but that's about all I can do.  

The solution to both of these problems may be running at work.  I work on an air force base so there is plenty of room to run, and it may be easier for me to try to run after work rather than before.  This will take some adjusting because I greatly prefer to exercise in the morning before I get my day started, but doing this will probably making planning my training runs much easier.  I've also thought about getting up early and going straight to work to run there in the mornings, but that would require me to use the weird shower in the office, and I don't know how I feel about that yet.  We'll see.

In any case, the marathon is going down this upcoming December 9th, which also happens to be my 25th birthday!  And yes, I have questioned whether running for upwards of 5 hours is really how I want to spend my birthday.  But I think it is :).