Getting Ready to Earn My Turkey

Well, I intended to try to update a little more frequently on my marathon training this fall, but the blog hasn't seen much action in the last couple of weeks. I figured with the Atlanta Half Marathon coming up on Thanksgiving Day, now would be a good time to update anyone who actually reads the blog on what I've been doing.

I've been pretty happy with the training plan so far, and except for last week - which was a step back week anyway (reduced miles for recovery) - I haven't missed any runs, yet. I took off this morning on my first of three 20-mile runs. The one thing that I felt would have helped me do better in my first marathon was to have run more 20-mile runs and built up my endurance better. The purpose of these long runs is have physical (physical endurance) and half mental (getting used to being on your feet that long). They are supposed to run at a pace slower than your actual race pace so that you don't injure yourself running fast all the time and to get closer to running closer to the actual time you would run the marathon, if that makes sense. So...this year's training plan has three 20-mile runs in it.

But back to this morning's run. It was cold. Real cold. Here was the forecast when I left the house:

Yeah...20 degrees. I decided that that was cold enough to break out the tights. Yeah, I'm not afraid to say it. I've got some cold weather tights...and yes, I wear shorts over them. The thermometer in the car said that it was 21 degrees when I started and 31 degrees when I finished. The water in my Nalgene water bottle froze sometime between the first and second loops around Stone Mountain. Total running time of 3 hours, so it was a good morning all around. Here is a shot of my Garmin 405 when I got done.


I'm going to go easy for the next few days and try to rest up a little for the half marathon on Thanksgiving Day. My main goal is just to do better than I did last year when I finished in 1 hour and 50 minutes. I think this will be a good test of my training program, even though it isn't ideal to do a 20-mile training run five days before a race!

Here's a rundown of my training so far this year compared to last year:

Total Miles Run to Date
2009: 325
2008: 248

Longest Run to Date
2009: 20 miles
2008: 15 miles

Most Miles in a Week to Date
2009: 47 miles
2008: 32 miles

Average Run Length
2009: 7.2 miles
2008: 6.0 miles

So...I feel pretty good about it all, and I am looking forward to the half marathon on Thursday. Maybe I'll blog a report on it over the weekend.