Let the Marathon Program Begin!

If all goes according to plan, 17 weeks from today I will be running the Pacific Shoreline Marathon in Huntington Beach, California. Today I started my race-specific marathon training by running 18 miles. For the first week and a half the program won't be too different from the running I've been doing -- mostly running a decent amount of miles, with a few fast miles thrown in. The big change will be next week, when I start the tempo runs. Recently I've run a few miles at my goal race pace, but I haven't run much faster than that for any distance over a quarter mile. However, I've run well lately, and I'm confident that if I run slow enough on my recovery days, I can handle the hard miles. The hardest part may be concentrating enough to maintain pace, but that's also part of the training.

Today's run went well. I ran the first 12 miles at an average pace of around 8:14 minutes/mile. The next five miles were at 7:42 pace or faster, and the final mile was a cooldown mile. That's the way the plan I'm following has me running the long runs, although the cooldown mile was my idea because it was getting dark, and I didn't want to trip.

Tomorrow's schedule calls for rest/cross-training.