Mon-Wed: Rest. My body and my brain needed to recover from the Lake Chabot Trail Challenge.
Thurs: One loop around Lake Merritt with my new Merrell Pace Gloves. On Tuesday, I traded them in for a larger size. I usually wear a size 6.5 or a 7, but I had to get these in a size 8! They felt great though. Also, this was my best post-race run to-date — no heavy legs. 🙂
Stats: 3.4 miles @ 9:53/mile
Fri: Rest.
Sat: Went to test out the “Woodmonster” (insert crude joke here) at Redwood Regional. This is an 800 foot climb over one mile, and I wanted to see how horrible it was before I registered for the Woodminster Cross Country Race. Even though it is very intense and steep, it didn’t feel nearly as bad as last week’s 500 foot climb at LCTC. The Gypsy Runner and I ran about 5.2 miles of the 9-mile Woodminster Course, which was really nice, minus the Woodmonster. My new Merrells felt great, too. This run put me in a great mood!
Stats: 5.2 miles @ 12:49/mile
On the West Ridge Trail in Redwood Regional Park. One of my favorite running trails.
My new Merrell Trail Gloves after their first trail run. They felt great!
Sun: One loop around Lake Merritt with the Gypsy Runner. First attempt at fartleks (random intervals). Not sure how successful it was, but felt OK.
Stats: 3 miles @ 9:28/mile
WEEKLY TOTAL: 11.6 miles.
How I feel about it: All 3 runs felt good this week, plus I’m really liking the new shoes. A
And now, for the BONUS announcement!! OK, well there’s two parts. The first announcement is that after the nice run yesterday, I’ve decided to run the Woodminster race.
The second announcement is… (drum roll, please):
EEEEK!!! It’s really happening…
I registered for the California International Marathon today!! I won’t be able to start officially training until I get back from vacation on August 6th, but after that I’ll have 17 weeks of hellish fun marathon training.
So now I ask all of you marathoners out there: Got any tips for a first-time marathoner like me? What kind of training programs work best for you? Do you always train to 20 miles or do you do more?
Looking forward to reading your advice!
Howdy! My name is Jen and I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I like to eat, run, and blog, but not usually at the same time.
Running Tangents 
YAYYY!! Ok ok I’m signing up too…
I’m sure we’ll end up talking marathon-ness a lot, but after doing CIM twice, I think the biggest thing for me that made the 2nd time so much better than the 1st was not so much the length of the longest run, but the fact that I did 5 runs that were 16 miles or longer (vs. only 2 the first time). That way I was still comfortable at 17-18 miles, and didn’t really start to suffer until after mile 20. Of course, priority #1 is to get to the start line healthy, and not overtrain if it compromises that goal.
Super excited you made it official!
Yay! I’m super excited about our future marathon-ness conversations. 🙂
The number of longer runs makes a lot of sense. Since this is my first marathon, I think I’ll do a lot of long distance training with a combination of running and walking, so that I can avoid injury and burnout.
Very smart–I think the run/walk thing is really nice for breaking up that monotonous pounding on the same spots that you get with a really long sustained run.
Marathons are in the air!
They sure are!
CIM was my first marathon last year. I did a long run every other weekend (four in total), & the progression went 14, 16, 18, 20 (though I was also doing a few multiple runs in the 10-12 range during the week). My 20 miler was 5 weeks before the race, not by choice, but because I was running a half 3 weeks before CIM. Otherwise, I would’ve done one more 20 miler three weeks out. Still, I was totally prepared & had a great race!
Good to know! Thanks for sharing, Angela.