Marathon Training Begins!

I realize that it has been quite sometime since my last post.  I’ve been dealing with a lot in my personal life – most notably, the passing of my grandmother.  She was a wonderful, strong woman who taught me a lot about life.  We were very close, and I will miss her dearly.  Through everything, running has done a lot to help keep me grounded.  Sometimes it feels like running is the only thing that is going right in my life.  A good run goes a long way to help me deal with a bad day.

My birthday is on Saturday, and I will be spending it with my husband and my parents in Orange Beach.  I am looking forward to the vacation, even though there are currently sharks swarming that very beach!  Saturday will mark the first day of the last year of my twenties.  It’s a weird feeling to enter a new decade.  My wonderful friends threw a party for me yesterday, and it was a blast!  They set up a day at the pool followed by a crawfish boil/cookout.  And they got my favorite DQ ice cream cake.  I am one lucky girl to have such amazing people in my life who care about me!!

As I have previously discussed, I am planning to wrap up my twenties by running a full marathon before I turn 30.  I met with a coach last week, and my program starts today!  My first “goal race” will be the Talladega Half Marathon on September 14, 2014.  This will hopefully serve as a measuring stick to continue my training for the full in January.  (Presently, that goal race will be the Rock-N-Roll Marathon in New Orleans on January 25, 2015.)  I am going to try to be more diligent about posting here as I work through my training program.  Hopefully, my experiences will be both entertaining and informative for you.

I am going to run this evening.  My plan for today is an easy two-mile run followed by 2 x 20 second strides.  Coach Alex, who started Resolute Running, explained that my primary focus will be on conditioning my body for endurance – teaching it to burn fat for consistent energy over long periods of time.  Once I have developed the endurance, speed will come easy he says.  To do this, my pace for the first month’s runs will be much slower than I typically run.  This week, every run will be at a 10:17 pace.  Coach Kelly will be my personal coach, and I am excited to see what all she has in store for me.  If I put my trust in them and work through the program as designed, they have assured me that I will reach my goals.  So here we go…

Run It Out

January 24, 2014

Yesterday’s run was tough.  I did a trail run up Monte Sano Mountain in the freezing temperatures.  However, since the “polar vortex” has taken over the Heart of Dixie, outdoor runs have become a little more difficult to obtain.  Therefore, it was definitely nice and rewarding to get back outside.  The fresh air was great, albeit a little tough to suck in.  And the dirt under my feet was a welcome change to a treadmill belt.  However, I think that my golden retriever and adventure partner, Tully, probably got the most out of the run.  I probably would have enjoyed it a little more if I had a specially designed fur coat as well! 

The run up was obviously the most difficult.  It was Day 13 of my streak, and with a pure barre class thrown in on Tuesday evening, my muscles were feeling the fatigue.  In the end, I completed a 3 mile run in a long 42:51.  My weather app said that it was 23 degrees and felt like 11.  I think it may have felt a little more like -11.  Luckily, all uphill on the first leg means all downhill on the way back!  And the views from the top are definitely worth the work.

I was first turned on to trail running by a friend almost exactly a year ago.  The first time I tried it I almost died.  Running up a mountain?  What kind of torture was this?  Oh, and did I mention that I am a total klutz.  No.  Really.  I fall down a lot.  It is a fact.  But I do love nature and being outdoors; I have since I was a kid.  See, I grew up on a cliché of a street where my neighbors were literally my cousins.  If the sun was shining, our parents kicked us out of the house and told us to play outside until time to eat.  We lived on a dead-end street in pretty much the middle of nowhere, so this meant approximately 25 acres of woods and fields.  So I guess I’ve technically been running through trails my whole life!

I made it about six months before I finally fell.  I tripped on a particularly rocky part of the trail and fell straightforward onto the jagged ground.  Tully was a little startled since I was holding his leash.  I scraped up my hands from catching my fall and seriously bruised my knee on one leg and front thigh on the other.  My friend who was running with me asked if I was okay.  After considering this for a moment, I said “yes.” 

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s run it out.”

I did.  After we finished, I looked at him, “Run it out? Seriously?”  He made some remark like, “it worked, didn’t it,” and I couldn’t help but agree.  I didn’t even have time to sit and think about my injuries.  I just got up and ran to finish.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be this way about everything in life?  Just get up and go.  I think I’m going to try to make that my mantra for 2014.  Life can get pretty complicated sometimes and maybe we all need to just “Run It Out.” 

A year after my first trail run, I competed in my first trail race: 

Monte Sano 15K Trail Run

January 11, 2014