Plugging along

I finally stuck to my training plan this week! 4 weeks into the program, and it's the first time I was able (willing) to do all three of the Tues/Wed/Thurs runs that I had scheduled for myself. Thursday's 8 miles felt great. I really believe that this program of running 4-5 times a week, varying the types of runs from easy, tempo, speed, and long, is really the right one for me. We'll see whether that still holds true come the marathon.

I didn't bring any water with me on my 16 miler last weekend and that turned out to be a mistake. The first 13 miles were great, but the last three got progressively worse as my thirst became stronger and stronger. I even tried stopping in a couple of coffee shops on my route to see if they had water fountains, but no luck. The counters were swamped with Saturday morning coffee drinkers and I didn't want to stand in line to ask for water, so I kept going. It was such a relief when I finally came to the fountains in the park, but that was at the end of the run, and my pace was really suffering by that time.

Otherwise, my runs feel great. I'm not doing my strength training as much as I should (as in I'm not doing them at all), but I am stretching more.

I have four out-of-town trips coming up now through January. Next week in Chicago is going to be especially rough.

new ING GA Marathon route announced

The new ING Georgia Marathon route is now available. Some pretty significant changes but a lot of it remains the same. The biggest change, besides starting and ending in Centennial Park, is that it also now goes over to the GA Tech campus in the last few miles.

My training is going okay. Not running as many times during the week as I planned to, but still getting my long runs in. This week I ran two 8-milers, and I'm up for a 16-miler today. Last week's 14-miler went very well. Following a 8:45 min run/1 min walk interval, I did it in 2:15. That's a 9:38 pace. If I could do a 9:30 pace for a full marathon, I would be very happy.

It's a lot harder than I thought it would be to run 5 times a week. It's not that I don't have time or that my body can't take it, but my mind really resists the idea of running that much. I can do 4 runs a week pretty easily, it's getting that fifth one in that's tough.