Philadelphia Marathon Training Has Begun

Well, I’m on to my 3rd marathon of the year!  I began my training towards the Philadelphia marathon, which is on November 19, 2014. When Jeff Galloway gave me my training plan for the year I began to break out in a cold sweat as I looked at it.  Usually I back down on my mileage during the summer for the obvious reasons of not wanting to do long runs in the heat.  Well, I am also working towards Dopey this year and just finished the Heartbreak Hill Half Marathon two weeks ago so I had some mileage under my belt already.

The schedule called for a 14 mile run over the weekend.  Every weekend in June had something going on every day.  This past Sunday NOTHING was on the calendar.  I had the chance to sleep in YAY!  But instead, I was toying with the idea of getting up early to get my run over with while it was cool out.  Also allowing me to still have time left in the day to do other things rather than sleep till 9, eat, get ready and maybe hit the road by 10:00 which would mean I would be home by 12:30 or 1:00, need to shower and then start the day.  I mentioned the crazy idea to my husband and he suggested I go for it.  (Sure it’s not him waking up at 6:00 on his weekend).  But he said if I did that then I could join everyone else for breakfast at iHop.

As much as I really didn’t want to get up early, I knew it was a smart idea for many reasons, it would be quieter on the roads that time of day, it would be much cooler and I would still have most of my day ahead of me.

It was a beautiful morning.  I jumped out of bed as my alarm went off, got ready, ate some toasted cinnamon bread and got out do the door by 6:45.  I had to map out my route a different way because I was already tired of my long run routes from my Providence marathon training long runs.  I did some of my usual roads past the vineyards and reservoirs, up my road, and then changed it up a little and headed towards my parents’ house and into North Haven via Route 17.  Being that it was earlier, Route 17 wasn’t too busy so I was happy about that.

I used the intervals of 45/30 and was comfortable with that.  I wanted to stay away from 30/30 because when running with friends, they sometimes use the longer intervals and if I only train for 30/30, changing to the longer interval is very difficult for me.  I will be running Philadelphia alone I believe, but I am going there to stay with a friend for the race, so she and I will talk about what our expected finish times are and her training plan as the summer progresses.  Running Providence with Perfect Goofy Gail taught me a lot about running a race with a friend and how our training plans can hurt/help each other if you discuss your intervals ahead of time to prepare for race day.

My run was successful.  It was a hilly warm day and after I was done, I wanted to compare my elevation map to the one from the Heartbreak Hill Half because I felt like I was running Heartbreak Hill in my own neighborhood!  Come to find out the elevations were pretty similar.

My finish time was 2:52:44 with 12:20/miles.  I am happy with that considering the big hill I had to tackle at the end.  And it is considered a training run, but I think I was going a little faster than I should be for a training run.  Next up on the schedule (I don’t want to know yet).  I know it is a 17 mile run within the next 2-3 weeks.  I’ll enjoy the low mileage for the next week or so and then look ahead to see what I have on schedule.  But I am pretty sure I will take the same approach and do it early in the morning so I don’t have to worry about the heat.  Maybe this time I”ll do it on a Saturday instead.  One thing I did notice was that my legs felt really good afterwards.  Not like Heartbreak Hill where they were pretty shot for a few days afterwards.  I did go for a shakeout run on Tuesday and was a little slow, but no pain.  So I’m pleased with that.