Marathon Training
I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would like to train for my second marathon. I ran my first marathon nearly five years ago, which I decided to do that at the time because I had lost a baby at 22 weeks of pregnancy, and discovered that the Chicago Marathon fell on the one-year anniversary of the loss of our son, Jacob Andrew. I had been doing some distance running at the time, and had completed the Old Kent (now Fifth Third) River Bank Run (a 25-kilometer run), and received a flyer for Chicago in the mail. Upon realizing the date, I knew this was how I wanted to spend the anniversary weekend of the loss of our son, rather than moping around the house and being sad. So I trained, and trained and trained, and finshed with a time of 5:29:40.

Fast forward five years. Haven't done much in the way of running as I had two children and some knee and foot problems which I think have been worked out due to a pair of finely-crafted custom orthotics and a new pair of running shoes. Right now, the training runs are pretty short (1.5-3 miles at a time) on the schedule I follow, which is available through Hal Higdon's website (www.halhigdon.com), but they'll work up to longer distances. However, one consideration I have this time that I didn't have last time was that I do not want training time to compromise time with my daughters. So that means training runs over lunch hours at work (with the shorter runs) or getting up really early in the morning, or some other very creative scheduling. Looking ahead, I'm scheduled to run a 20 mile run (the longest training run in the schedule) on the day of my sister Sue's wedding, in which I'm a bridesmaid. So I will be devoting part of this to my progress in training for the race, scheduled for October 10, 2004.
- posted by Kristen @ 3/25/2004 10:51:00 PM