Today begins day 1 of the smackdown. The smackdown is also known as training for my first marathon, the NYC marathon on November 1st. I am (hopefully) running the NYC marathon against my "hot" sister's advice. My hot sister has run two marathons and is generally a gifted athlete. I do not suffer the same affliction of being gifted in relation to athletics. I enjoy sports, being outdoors, and being active -- but that doesn't mean that I'm any good at it. My husband sent me a post today that really resonated with me: In Defense of Being Average I think that I often suffer from this idea that I must be good at everything, when really just getting out there is enough. After all, I'm lapping everyone on the couch.
This morning I woke up early and printed out my training plan. I formatted it nicely in excel and posted it on my whiteboard. Obviously since it is printed I will follow it to the T ;-) It is basically a modified version of Hal Higdon's Intermediate 1 training plan. I've beefed up the midweek mileage a bit and dropped one of the 20 mile runs. My hot sister says that 20 milers are grueling and since I am such a slow runner I'll be out there for a long time to accomplish the run. She has advised me that doing that to my body more than once during my first training cycle probably wouldn't be a smart approach to marathon training. I'll heed her advice because she's done this before and she's generally more knowledgeable about fitness than I am. Though of course I disregarded her initial advice to never do a marathon...
Today the training plan called for cross training. I dutifully did my 30 minutes on the exercise bike downstairs while watching some Netflix and trying not to be bored to tears. Maybe I should look into some more interesting cross training options for Mondays, but the local spin studio doesn't have convenient class times for me on Mondays. Unless I want to get to the spin studio by 6am, which isn't going to happen.
Speaking of early mornings, I really need to get better at getting out the door for my runs early because summers in NYC basically suck climate-wise. I have no problem waking up early, but I am habituated to reading, drinking my coffee, and relaxing in the morning. During the springtime I typically did my runs around 11am after I'd dropped of hubby at the train and relaxed for a bit.
Today I also finally stepped on the scale after basically eating my stress for the past 6 weeks. It wasn't a pretty number, but I've been in worse places with my weight before. I took my measurements and recorded them - let's see what marathon training does to this wonderful body of mine. Maybe if there's some progress on that front I'll share the information. I'm going to try to measure myself every two weeks or so and step on the scale everyday that I wake up at home. That probably sounds skeevier than it should; I'm referring to the travelling I'll be doing over the summer that will keep me away from my scale.
I think that this is more than enough for an introductory blog post. I'll try to post a bit every day, but no promises on that front. I'd rather be getting my runs done than writing about not having done them. I also noticed on a reread that I used the word suffer twice in the first paragraph - I wonder if this is the subliminal thought I'm having relating to the NYC Marathon.
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