This is week two of my marathon training.  My schedule includes days that I should run a ‘tempo’ pace and some days when I run a ‘marathon’ pace.  I wasn’t really sure what in the world a ‘tempo’ pace even was until I found this great training calculator on Runner’s World.com.  The first thing I need to do is decide exactly how fast I think I can complete a marathon.  After I plug that in, the calculator figures out my training paces:  easy, tempo and marathon.  Voila!  Now if I could just figure out a site that could run the runs for me…

Since I still need to be gentle and kind to my knee, I will be moving two of my runs per week inside to the dreaded treadmill.  I think five days on the street (…running…) will be too much for me right off the bat.  (Insert heavy sigh.)  I don’t like running on the treadmill.  It’s SO boring but I can use it to accurately set up speeds for the tempo and marathon pace runs.  This is how I feel about the treadmill:  http://www.badstockart.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/90311026.jpg 🙂

Monday Morning Run:

I just ran my first five-mile ‘easy’ run.  First of all, five miles is NOT EVER easy.  Let’s get that straight.  BUT knowing that it was my ‘easy’ run was nice.  I wasn’t really concerned about trying to go faster.  I did a lot more looking around at stuff, the hills were easier to take and I felt more relaxed overall.  Nice.  I used my husband’s ‘break it up’ idea for the couple of long hills and it worked better than the last time – probably because I wasn’t stressed out about them.

The weather today is kind of weird.  It was about 70 degrees, there were water droplets in the air like fog but it wasn’t foggy and it is HUMID.  I thought I was in Houston for a while!  The ground was muddy because we had a full day of rain (much-needed rain) so I had to run in the street where there was no sidewalk.  School is out for Columbus Day so there weren’t any cars to speak of on the streets so it all worked out.

Tomorrow I run 5 miles at marathon pace.  My goal marathon pace is 12 minutes per mile.  I ran the half marathon last year at 11:16 per mile so I think 12 minutes is reasonable. 

My random thought for today:  I’ve been thinking about buying some expensive ($10-$15) running socks.  I saw some for $12 the other day and ever since then I have been wondering what difference expensive socks like that would make for my run.  ???

Maybe I’ll try out my brand new fancy socks at my next 5K run: http://www.active.com/running/plano-tx/chi-zeta-omega-5k-fun-runwalk-2011