All About Marathon Training and Stuff

This is not a how-to blog.

I need to remember that. Sometimes I don’t post very often because I don’t feel like my blog is helping anyone.

But as I get ready to start marathon training, I remember why I started Mom vs. Marathon in the first place: for me to track and share my training/running in the hopes that others can learn from my failures and successes, and share their failures and successes.

Last week, I posted an article on the MvM Facebook page in which a dude goes on passionately about how dumb marathons and running are, and how runners should just shut up about them already. It was actually pretty funny; I believe it was written all in good humor. As I expected, my husband loved it.

But I think the thing non-runners don’t get is that it’s a personal quest. So it’s important to us. And we are pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones. It’s exciting. And it occupies a lot of our time. And, so we talk about it.

This blog (and the Facebook page) also gives me an outlet to talk about running without my husband divorcing me.

It’s already Tuesday, but here’s how my pre-training has gone so far:

Sunday was my long run. I just wanted to get about an hour and 20 minutes. I timed breakfast to be about an hour and a half before my run. Except right when I was about to leave, my son wanted to play a game.

“What sort of game?” I asked.

He said, just a short one…”5 or 10 minutes.” Like 6-year-olds have a good grasp on time. He went downstairs and returned with…

…wait for it…

Scrabble. In the whole game-length genre, Scrabble is right up there. It goes Risk, Monopoly then Scrabble, right?

But I had plenty of the day to run and so we played the slowest game of Scrabble ever. Not really, but after an hour, my son was not so into it anymore. Of course, I was now hungry again.

I decided to just take my BCAAs in my water bottle (they help curb hunger) and bring some Clif Bloks, and I went.

Not much to write about for most of the run. I ran the lake loop off the trail by my house. I listened to my favorite long-run podcast, Talk Ultra. It’s like 3 hours long.

I ran slow. I walked the hills. I got passed by pretty much everyone. I saw a guy wearing an Ace bandage on his neck and head vacuuming out his car in his driveway.

You know, the usual.

On my second loop of the lake, I was out of water. I was at about 6.25 miles, and still about a mile or so away from home. It was sunny, though, so I thought I’d stop at the park to fill up my water bottle. I guess they have the water off from winter still because all four spots were bone dry. Rrrrrr.

While stopped, I was approached by a woman who explained they were short a person on their kickball team and would I like to play kickball. OF COURSE I WOULD. Except we had dinner reservations for our anniversary that night and I needed to clean myself up slightly before we left. It was already 1:30 or so. How long’s a kickball game?

I declined the offer and was on my way.

Sunday’s run was 7.23 miles in 1:28:10. A 12:11 pace.

Mondays are lifting days. I’m following a plan by Dave Dellanave. Here’s what went down:

1. Conventional deadlift: 4×6 with 95 pounds on the barbell

2. Chin up (hangs): 4 seconds, 5, 4 – then stopped because my thumb and index finger on my left hand went numb. It took about 4 hours to get the feeling back in them.

These are alternating sets:

3A. Dumbbell 1-arm bent over row with 25 pound dumbbell 5×10/10

3B. Straight leg sit ups 5×15

Followed with metabolic circuit workout from Jen Sinkler called Crazy 8s.

You do 3 rounds as fast as possible. It took me 6 minutes.

• 8 dead bugs (ea. side)
• 8 hand release push-ups
• 8 knee to elbow planks (ea. side)
• 8 squat jumps

Today, I knew I wanted to get in an hour of slow running. I woke up at 6, debated going back to bed (because it was raining) then looked at my weather app and saw lightning forecasted for the afternoon. Not wanting to skip my run, I went to the gym, but didn’t get there in time for an hour of running. Instead, I was able to run for 45 minutes before I had to get back home.

After a 5 minute warm up walk, I set the ‘mill at a 1% incline and put my pace at 12-minute miles. I felt stiff and backed off to like a 12:14 mile, lowered the incline to .5%, and that helped. I ran that for about 10 minutes until I felt looser and upped it to 12-minute miles again.

But the best part of today was delivered on my front porch this afternoon: