Day One of Marathon Training

Okay everyone, today is day one of my 18 week marathon training program.  I intend to follow Hal Higdon's 18 week program with minor modifications.  You can view the plan here.  I intend to participate in several 5K and Half Marathon races here in Saskatchewan, as well as in Manitoba over the next few months.  I haven't scheduled any races for August, though this may change.  The marathon I am training for is the Queen City Marathon in Regina, Saskatchewan on Sunday, September 7th.  It is my first marathon, and my goal is to finish. Ideally I would finish in under 4:30, but I will be thrilled to finished in under 4 hours.

I didn't train coherently for my first half marathon, I just went out and ran the distance and finished in under 2 hours. Luckily my body was prepared and strong enough for the pounding it took.  Still, if I had maybe done proper training, I might have been able to finish a good ten minutes faster.

In the run up to my second half marathon, I was beset with an IT band injury.  As a result, I did a total of 4 long runs and almost nothing else in the month before the race.  Thus, when I crossed the finish line at 2:19, I wasn't surprised.  In fact, I boldly predicted my finish time just a day before the race: "So my prediction, unfortunately, is that I am going to finish in 2 hours and 20 minutes."

Okay, now that I've gotten all that out of the way... 

I did some light stretching, foam rolling and yoga (I'll post some links/videos later so you can see).  Today is a non-running day, but it is not an off day as there is much to do.

My job now is to rebuild the endurance I've lost because of my SI Joint injury (which played a big part in the IT band pain). What's really hard to cope with is that my leg muscles, which seemed wholly capable of conquering 21k back in March, are now suddenly unable to handle the pounding.  But that's about to change.

I'm rebuilding.  This time I'm going to do everything the right way.