At the beginning of April I started training for my first marathon.  It’s taking place on the 26th of October so I’m giving myself loads of time to train for it. I thought it might be good to post a little update to let you know where I’m at, how I’m training and what my weekly training routine looks like.

I currently run three times a week, and work out with my trainer twice a week. A typical week looks like this:

• Monday: Workout with my trainer; weights for legs and back, HIIT on the spinning bike, core/pilates
• Tuesday: Rest
• Wednesday: Short hard run (this week was 5 miles)
• Thursday: Medium, easy run (this week was 6 miles)
• Friday: Rest
• Saturday: Workout with my trainer; weights for upper body, HIIT on the spinning bike, core/pilates
• Sunday: Long, slow run (this week will be 9 miles)

I’ve developed a running routine that works really well for me. If I skip any aspect of my run I really feel it the next day!

1. I do a warm up walk of about half a mile. No Garmin
2. I turn the Garmin on and run for about a mile.
3. Then I pause the Garmin, do dynamic stretches for about 5 minutes
4. After that I turn the Garmin back on then run the rest of my planned distance.
5. Once I’ve hit my target distance, I turn the Garmin off, then do a cool down walk of about half a mile to a mile
6. Lastly, once I’m home, I do static stretching for about 10-12 minutes.

So let’s talk about pacing. I’m a slow runner, I’m sure you’ve gathered that by now! My current hard run pace is 13:43-45min/mile while my easy run pace is 14:43-45/mile. (As an aside, it turns out that I did run my 10k race too slow and I could have pushed it when I felt like it. My race pace on the day was slower than my hard run pace!)

What I’ve learned from many sources though, is to keep the hard runs hard and the easy runs easy.  But that’s easier said than done! Tuesday, for example, I was on my hard run, trying to keep to 13:45 but noticing that I was running 13:30 at one point and feeling good at that pace. But it’s important to stick to your planned pace so I slowed it down when I saw I was going too fast. At first I felt weird slowing down but at the end of the day I’m not too fussed about running fast as long as I run well.

So far everything is good. I have hit all my target distances and am on track for my next race, the Irish Runner 5 mile on June 27th. I’m looking forward to this one, I really enjoyed it last year and I’m hoping to see a big improvement my time.

I know that during my training this year I will have good runs and bad runs, great days and awful days, happy moods and grumpy ones. But all of it, the ups and downs and in betweens are going to be worth it. This is going to be the craziest, toughest, most awesome, brilliant, challenging year ever. I can’t wait to see who I am at the end of it!