So it Begins ...

I haven't posted in awhile. We had a family emergency that kept me from running for about a week. I ran 3 miles on Monday, April 28, and didn't run again until Tuesday, May 6. That week I ran 3 miles on Tuesday, 3 miles on Thursday, and 5 miles on Saturday.

Last week I ran 3 miles on Tuesday, 4 miles on Wednesday, and 3 miles on Friday. That was the first time that I ran 2 days in a row. I intended to also run Saturday, but I was sick and my shins were really tightening up, so I skipped Saturday and Sunday.

I need to develop an ability to run multiple days in a run in order to be able to stick to my marathon training schedule, but I don't think I'm there yet. I'm hoping that my shin tightness is simply my body telling me that I'm not ready to run so many consecutive days yet, something that I can build up to through training, and not an indication of some more serious injury or anything. The big concern would be that the tightness is not just "normal" shin splits, but some kind of micro fracture that would prevent me from running for a long period of time.

St. George Marathon

I found out last week that I was not selected through the lottery system to run in the St. George Marathon. I was very disappointed, but decided to try my luck through the charity system. Each year the St. George Marathon gives away a certain number of entries to different charities to distribute how they please. Some charities simply auction off their entries to the highest bidder on ebay. I was lucky enough to get a spot with the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which does not auction off its entries, but rather requires its participants to raise at least $500 for the charity in order to secure the marathon entry.

Marathon Training

So according to the 20-week marathon training schedule I've found, I should start today and I should be able to run Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday this week. I'm not to that point yet, so I'm going to modify the schedule to my abilities. I think that this week I will run today and tomorrow, take Wednesday off, then depending on how I'm feeling, I'll try another back-to-back running on Friday and Saturday, or I'll just run Thursday and Saturday, and wait to try multiple back-to-back running for next week. I think that no matter what I should run 4 days this week at least, and not drop below that from here on out.

I've also found a 16-week training schedule for first time marathoners which seems to be a little less strenuous, so I think that I'll cater the training schedules to my ability and work my way up to a 5-days-a-week schedule over the next 4 weeks. We'll see how it goes.