I am not a marathoner, hell I am not even really a runner. I am ex-sprinter who has gotten the idea in his head that he can run a marathon. I don’t think I am just going to be able to walk out my door tomorrow and start knocking out 11 mile runs, the longest I made it the last time I was serious. I plan to gradually build up my endurance again and work on building a solid foundation of core muscles.
Because this is my first time around I am actually going to rely, at least for this first half of training, on the automated Smart Coach at Runners World to spit out a training program for me. To get a basic training regimen all you need to do is provide a recent race time, for me it was 25:47 in a 5k I did around a year ago. You then select the race you are training for, I selected a half-marathon because I plan to run a half in November which will give me around 13 weeks to train for the full. I chose the lowest number of miles for what I am currently running, selected to train “Very Hard”, and my long day is on Sunday. The program is for 15 weeks which will spit me out right at the half I am wanting to run.
I intend to run three days a week and then starting in the 8th week I will pick up a 4th day of running. This will gradually move me from 6 miles per week at the beginning to 20+ miles per week by the half marathon. I am a little concerned because it is still crazy hot around here and I don’t do well in the heat but I just hope to stay well hydrated and push through the heat to get on track. I would rather run in snow and 32 degrees, than any hot summer day. Once I run the half marathon I will reset and generate a new program for the full marathon I plan to run in March. The following image shows the first 8 weeks of my program:
In addition to three days a week running I plan to do three days of core muscle exercises. My week will play to out to be Monday, Wednesday, Friday core exercises then on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday I run.
I plan to post regular twitter updates about my workouts so make sure you follow me on twitter. In addition to my short twitter updates I will provide a weekly summary of my progress so be sure to subscribe to either my free RSS feed or for free email updates.
