Today I officially started my training program for the Galveston Mardi Gras Marathon that will take place on Sunday, February 5, 2012.  Let me let that soak in for a second.

I am on a 16 week schedule that really started on this past Monday.  I missed two days of running, but they were shorter runs, so I think I’m okay.  The schedule has me running 5 days a week – which will be an adjustment.  One run is short and easy, one is short and at marathon pace and another is short and tempo paced.  I guess I need to decide what I want my marathon pace to be.  Hmmm…  Slow. 😉  

As the weeks go by, all of the runs get longer until I do one 20 mile run.  Weekly mileage will go from 27 miles to FORTY miles.  It would be an understatement to say that I am nervous.  The long runs get really long pretty quickly and it’s pretty scary to think about it. 

This week’s long run was supposed to be 7 miles.  I had trouble going to sleep last night.  I hit ‘snooze’ 4 times before I got out of bed this morning and I had trouble getting dressed and out of the door to start my run.  When I stepped outside, I was almost immediately disappointed.  It was warm, cloudy and muggy.  Great.  I thought it was going to be cool.  So I headed out – trying to remember to thing good thoughts and just take it one step at a time.  My husband suggested a way to get up hills without the mental crash that I usually experience.  He suggested I break the hill up into 3 or 4 pieces and focus on getting to one spot at a time.  At my first uphill stretch, I used the ‘break it up’ method and it was helpful.  If nothing else, it gave me something to think about other than how tired and hot I was feeling.

I made it through the run okayish until about 4-1/2 miles.  I use the Nike+ GPS app on my iPhone to track

Image by quinn.anya via Flickr

and monitor my runs.  The voice on the app was confusing the crap out of me this morning.  The app counts mileage up until half way.  After you hit your halfway mark, it starts counting down.  It was REALLY cloudy this morning and I disco

vered (after the fact) that the GPS had ‘lost’ me.  The mileage countdown was completely off and it was making the run SOO hard.  I was confused because I knew how far I should have run at different points but the app voice feedback was telling me something different.  Since I was tired and out of it, I just kept trying to figure out what was going wrong.  I couldn’t do simple subtraction:  What is 7 miles minus 2.25 miles?  I just could not get it straight.  When I got back near home where I should have hit 7 miles, the app told me I had  mile left.  Ugh.  I ran around another block and back up my street and my app was still at 6.67 miles.  I had to stop, though.  I was out of energy.

When I got home, I plotted my run on MapMyRun.com and I’d run 7.73 miles.  O.K….  wow.  NO WONDER I WAS SO WORN OUT!  My longest run in the last SEVERAL months has been 5 miles and I’ve only done that twice. 

Twelve hours have passed since I ran this morning and I am still struggling a little bit.  My knee is pretty stiff.  (Yes, I iced it.)  My shoulders hurt a little but most of all, I’m just TIRED. 

Tomorrow is a ‘rest’ day – so there IS rest for the weary, sometimes.  I’ll need it.  I ran 17 miles this week.  Next week, I will run 26.

I’m officially TRAINING FOR MY FIRST FULL MARATHON.  I can do it.  🙂