Supasta!

My marathon training guide tells me I’m supposed to do a 20 mile run roughly three weeks before the marathon. Well, Philip and I had planned on putting that in last Saturday but had to postpone so we could hang out at the hospital late Friday night waiting for our adorable new niece to be born. We were more than happy to make the sacrifice, haha.

Philip has yet to put in the longest training run but I managed to look up a route in Roanoke on mapmyrun.com, fill my camelpack with water, grab some powergel, and wake up early yesterday morning to finally get that sucker over with. It was a lot of stopping at busy intersections and running with a map trying to make sure I didn’t get off course in Roanoke’s ghetto (yes, Roanoke has a ghetto, I used to live on the edge of it.) But I managed to run until my knees were creaky, my entire back ached, I was hunching over little by little, and my camelpack rubbed some boil-sized blisters on my shoulder. I now have some idea of what the marathon is going to do to my body. After the run I stretched and guzzled water and felt o.k. as long as I was moving. When I stopped moving even for a second I honestly thought my joints would crumble if I tried to make them work again. I think I accelerated my body about 60 years in three and 1/2 hours of running.

Today my back is throbbing and the backs of my ankles (Achilles tendons probably??) are really tight but other than that I think i’m recovering well.  I am even more excited for the marathon now because I know that if I can run 20 miles around hilly Roanoke stopping and starting constantly, following a lousily charted map, without water stations and cheerleaders, on a near 90 degree day then 26 miles of a cleanly guided, uninterrupted run around Baltimore on a (hopefully) much cooler morning with water stations and cheerleaders can’t be any worse.

Birthday!

Today is my 25th birthday. I’m doing all the celebrating possible for a Monday. Hope you’re all having a wonderful day!

Here’s something fun for you 

Three Weeks to the Baltimore Marathon

The Baltimore Marathon – my first marathon ever!!! – is looming entirely too near now that it’s only three weeks away. So…how scared should I be? Any advice from you professional marathon runners out there? Anything I should prepare myself for?

This is shameful but I’ll admit to it – Phil and I ran our longest run so far – 15 miles (was supposed to be 16 but we miscalculated the turn-around point) the weekend before last. I know, I know, we should be training higher than that by now. We plan on doing 20 this Saturday and then two weeks of light running before the race. Now that it’s getting cooler I’m very relieved we decided on an October run because it should be nice and cool without being miserably cold. I now know why all of the big marathons are held in the Fall.

Good luck to all you Fall marathoners!!