This first thing I want to mention is that you have helped to raise $8,174 for Children’s Hospital by sponsoring me in the Boston Marathon! I feel very blessed to know so many generous and giving people. If you have not had an opportunity to register your sponsorship and feel you are able to contribute then you can do so here.
Today marks the end of my 17th week of training, which I started in October. As most of you know, prior to October the most I had run in the last 20 years was 3-4 miles. Last week my family and I were on a Disney cruise to the Caribbean and as relaxing as vacation is supposed to be, this would be a bad time to suspend my training schedule. Thankfully the ship we were on had a 1/3 mile track on deck 4 and I was able to log some mileage. What I was not counting on was the heat, humidity, heavy winds and the pitching and rolling of the deck! My heart rate was up 10 bbm and I had to take it slow and run no more than 6 miles at a time. I think the effort was more like 12 miles though! Since we were traveling back to Boston on Sat, I moved my long run to yesterday (Sunday) and successfully completed my first 20 miler in 3 hours and 48 minutes. Following the instructions of my training program I ran slow and steady with 30 second walk breaks every 4 minutes. I stopped once per hour to thoroughly stretch and drank 7 ounces of fluids every 20 minutes. I finished feeling very tired but in fairly good shape.
That brings my total training distance to 372 miles so far, with 8 more weeks to go. My confidence is building, but the fact is that the marathon itself is much harder than any individual training run I will do and there is always the variable weather conditions, injury or illness that can make race day extremely difficult for a newbie runner. On March 21st I will be participating in a training run on the last 21 miles of the Boston Marathon course, along with many other charity teams. That’s when I will find out if the hill training I have been doing was enough.
Thanks again for everyone’s support and encouragement!