December 31st, 2019
Earlier this year, I decided I would begin the journey of running a full marathon by the end of 2019. I have done one 1/2 marathon and was in the process of training for a second 1/2 marathon when I decided to pursue a full marathon. For the next few months, I will detail all my progress and failures as I pursue this goal. But first I will lay out what has driven me to set this goal and how I went from 0 running days to pursue 26 miles in a single day.
For the longest time, the idea of running 26 miles seemed absolutely insane, but I was jealous of people who could run 20+ marathons in a single year because the achievement seemed so astronomical to me. “How could this even be done?”, “Aren’t their knees about to fall off?” are questions I would ask myself when I would see a story like this. I was always a good athlete (played 3 years of collegiate football at Georgia Southern and Samford Universities), but distance running was something I was never good at.
In 2018, my wife and I decided to run the Publix Marathon in Atlanta, GA in March. We followed the Hal Higdon 1/2 marathon training Novice 1 schedule, which allowed me to really get my body used to running without putting extra strain on my joints. As the miles increased, I found myself almost becoming addicted to the feeling of running for 8+ miles to the point where there was excitement when the schedule called for long runs. This training cycle really sparked a love of running inside of me, and that love is what is pushed me to set this goal for 2019.
First Update:
12.29.2018
Saturday’s are always long run days under the Hal Higdon schedule, and this Saturday called for 11 miles. 11 miles will be my longest training distance ever, even though I have run a 1/2 marathon in the past year. I felt pretty good going into this run because I had run 10.5 miles the weekend prior, but I had some knee pain during the week and also broke in a new pair of running shoes, so I was a little uncertain how this run would go.
As I started, I felt really strong, and my new shoes performed very well with very little knee pain for most of the run. I ran the first 8 miles with an average pace of 9:30, which is pretty good for me, being a 225 lb former football player. The remaining 3 miles were a bit of a challenge, having some difficulty keeping a pace under 10:00 per mile.
Overall, I was very pleased with this particular run and also very pleased with how my body is holding up as the mileage increases. Typically I begin to get knee pain after about 6-7 miles, but I truly believe I have been running in the wrong shoes for the better part of my training cycle. I cannot stress enough how important it is to invest the money in a pair of shoes that are made for the way you run.
One aspect of my training that I will change as the mileage goes up is strength training. As of this week, I am doing 3-4 days of strength training with 3 days of running. I am going to decrease my strength days to 1-2 days, and changing those lost strength days with 1 day of Yoga and an additional day of running. The goal here is to get the miles up on my legs, and too many strength days could lead to injury.
More updates to follow…