Whitney v/s the Marathon: Part Deux

Well, it has been a little less than three years since I last posted on this blog and, MY, HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED.   To say that the last three years have been eventful would be quite the understatement considering that in this time period I:   moved to France, learned to live in a new culture and language, made new friends, joined a new church,  gave birth,  traveled to more countries that I have the energy to count right now, moved from France to Southern California,  lost and replaced half of our family's household goods due to mold, made even more new friends, and joined yet another new church.        

During all of these changes and chaos, though, two things have remained constant:  1.   my relationship with Jesus, and 2.   my relationship with running.    While this blog will be focused mostly on the subject of that second relationship, I'm sure that my faith will ooze over into my writing here as well.   I've decided to restart this journal as a way to document my training for the San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon.   The race is four months from now and I started my training program yesterday.   The last time I wrote about training I failed to meet my time goal of four hours for the National Marathon in DC, and I vowed to never again train for a marathon with a specific time goal in mind.  Until now, I have kept that promise.   (I ran two marathons while we were in Europe, Hamburg and Stockholm.   I plan to write up race recaps on this blog sometime in the future.)   But now the marathon sirens are calling to me and I am responding.   Inspired by an encouraging half marathon time this fall (1:45),  I have set a time goal of 3:45 and will be tracking all of my training here.   I will be doing most of my training with Susannah, my 14 month old daughter.   I'm hoping pushing 25 extra lbs for the majority of my runs will help me meet my race day goal.

Yesterday was training run number one, and considering the fact that I'm still on antibiotics for bronchitis and hadn't run in over a week, I was pretty encouraged with my performance.   I did 6 easy miles (according to the Mcmillan pace calculator, my easy run pace should be 9:00-9:30 pace.)   Including stops for redlights and sippy cup retrievals, I kept a 9:25 pace.   I finished the run feeling really encouraged that I hadn't lost as much fitness as I had feared during my illness.  

Today was training run number two and I again felt encouraged.   I was supposed to do a 45 minute tempo run.   According to McMillan, my tempo pace should be 8:00.    In the past I have always done tempo runs on the treadmill so I could moniter the pace, but since I no longer have access to a gym, I was left to my own devices for this one.   I ran the first two miles at what felt like an easy pace (mile 1 9:29   mile 2 8:45) then at mile three I picked it up to what I guessed was an 8:00 pace.   And by this I mean I ran pretty much as hard as I could for mile three.   I figured that I had lost some speed during my week off, so I thought that I would really have to kill myself to hold an 8 minute pace.   During that mile, I felt like I was dying which is most definitely not how one is supposed to feel on a tempo run.  My understanding is that one should feel like they are pushing hard, but also feel refreshed.   Refreshed is definitely not an adjective I would choose when describing how I felt during mile 3.   I was tired.   I was dragging.  I was sucking wind.   I was not refreshed.    My original plan was to run mile 4 and 5 at an easy pace.   When I hit mile 4 though, after allowing myself to slow down enough to catch my breath, I looked at my watch and realized we were going to be late to our ultimate destination, storytime at the library.   So, we cut our run short and instead of an easy mile 4 and 5, we did a faster mile 4.  

I am happy to report that we did make it to storytime and Susannah enjoyed herself immensely.   Thankfully she is too young to be embarrassed by her sweaty mother.   I usually try to arrive a few minutes early so I have time to cool down and change shirts.  I don't want to offend the other moms by dripping sweat on the alphabet carpet tiles.  Today there was no time though and I couldn't help but consider the irony as we sang the opening song, "The more we get together, together, together....The more we get together the happier we'll be."  I'm pretty sure that not one person in that room felt inclined to get anymore together with me or the sweat puddle around me than they already were.   Luckily, everyone was kind enough to pretend they weren't grossed out, even if they were.  

I am also happy to report that when we got home, I checked my splits for the tempo run and saw that during mile 3, I was sucking wind with good reason....7:32 pace!!   While this shows that I definitely need to work on getting to know my body concerning pacing, I am super happy that I had a 7:32 in me after battling this bronchitis for 2 weeks.  

Well, I guess I should draw this post to a close.    I am really looking forward to blogging about this training cycle.  Feel free to comment.   While I'm mostly doing this blog for my own entertainment, I would love to know that there is at least one or two other people who read this.  ;)  

Happy Running Everyone!