Marathon Training - Week 1 Is Over

Wee 1 of marathon training is over and I’ve put 50k into the running bank. The week of running was made up of 5 days of effort and 2 rest days. As one would hope, being the first week of an 18 week training schedule, it was a fairly comfortable week for me with nothing too terribly taxing. Apart from the 6k race on Wednesday all of the runs were done at an easy pace and the terrain was the usual variation from flat to hilly just to keep me from getting bored.

The only downside for me for the week was that I had to do every run on my own because my usual running partner is injured. I’m going to find it hard to stay motivated if his injury is to be long-term, but I’ll deal with that should it happen down the track.

The toughest run of the week came today, my long run day, because it was my first weekend run since the half marathon in May. I’m out of the routine of making time to fit the run in to my weekend schedule and so, by lunch-time I decided it was now or never, threw on my running gear and slipped out for the hour long run.

Sydney put on a particularly blowy day today and the weather was constantly threatening with rain for the entire run. Normally I don’t care if it rains while I’m running, in fact sometimes I welcome it, but I like to do my long runs while listening to music so I had my iPod with me. I’m not sure how the iPod will stand up to a complete drenching and I’m not particularly keen to find out so I had one eye on the sky the whole way. Fortunately I managed to beat any real rain and finished the 12k run in just under 60 minutes with a dry iPod.

I’ll post the second week of my schedule tomorrow and then will try to put together the other 16 weeks later in the week.