Marathon training has officially commenced.  

Obviously, I’ve been running for awhile, even building up to 12 miles, but I started a new training plan and am now doing my best to stick to it instead of doing my own thing.  It calls for more weekly mileage than I’ve previously done, including a mid-distance run on Friday to tire me out a bit for the Saturday long runs.  It will be hard work and require me to push myself out of my ‘comfort zone’, but I think definitely worth it in the end.

Basically, I’m trading fun for pain.  Good pain hopefully, as I don’t want to relive the excruciatingly painful experience I had in San Diego 3 years ago.  That is what scares me the most, what still causes me some sense of apprehension about training for this one.  That experience is what has kept me from training for a marathon up until this point—not the time required for training or even the expected pain of running 26.2 miles—but the possibility of me having a mid-marathon injury and not getting to enjoy the race.

The marathon course has finally been published and at first, I was not happy with it.  I mean, of all the wonderful places to run around the Seattle area, they pick this (somewhat) point-to-point route?

I didn’t think it held any possibility of being enjoyable…running on the viaduct and passing the finish line 3 times before I actually finish?? No thank you!  Plus, how am I supposed to run the route beforehand?  I’m 99.9% sure that pedestrians aren’t allowed on 70% of the course.  

But the more I think about it and visualize the race, I’m pretty excited for it, and think it will be a good first year course with great views.  My friend Aubrey will be running the half marathon, so it will be fun to get ready for this together and have our husbands out on race day as our cheerleaders.  And I signed up to volunteer at the Expo, so I’ll get to be one of the smiling faces giving the runner’s a good start to their marathon weekend.  

Only 16 weeks left!