I’ve always wanted to run a Marathon – I’ve run 5 half marathons 5 or 6 years ago, I’ve also completed 4 Avon 39 events, 26.2 miles on day 1 and 13.2 miles on Day 2. These were no small feats and I’m very proud of these goals that I chose to start AND finish. During that time though, I suffered a lot of injury, shin splints, hip pain, Morton’s neuroma on my left foot and serious fatigue. When I stopped running all of these issues went way. So why am I doing this again? Good question, I don’t think I did it right the 1st time. I dove in head first during my training and didn’t educate myself, nor did I ever stretch or prepare my body for such strenuous activities. Over the last few months I’ve been cross training on my Peloton and doing workouts with my friend, student and fellow blog poster Tamara McClure, I feel that I’m ready to take on this new challenge and run my Rock and Roll Full Marathon on May 31st. My son Derek is also signed up and will be training on his own down in San Diego. I hope to have some training sessions with him over the next 22 weeks. My husband is also training, going at his own pace, whether he does the marathon is up to him and I won’t pressure him, but I will say that this is my dream come true to be running side by side with two people that I love very much!!
2020 is a big year ahead, Sean is turning 50 and we have a lot of travel planned that I’m very excited about, hopefully the cross training and all of this running will help put my body in shape to where I’m comfortable wearing a bathing suit in Mexico and then later in the year Bali. I plan on blogging this training and my food as well as my activities leading up to May 31st starting with today. The food may be a challenge, but the goal is to be mostly vegetarian, I need to drop 20lbs, and I’m hoping with the elevated exercise and tracking what I’m eating along with my Intermittent Fasting 16/8 daily, that I’ll be able to reach my goal weight of a 127lbs. I have been in Peri-menopause for near 6 years, maybe more, and the weight will not easily come off, my hormones are all over the board, I have low days and high days, some happy and some that are full of piss and vinegar, I retain water like there’s no tomorrow for weeks on end, then after 3 -4 weeks of symptoms, they go away and I don’t see them for 5-6 weeks, or maybe 2 weeks, it all depends. Last month I started taking estrogen and things are leveling out. I think I’m on the right track and the more I exercise the less I feel all of those symptoms of Peri-menopause. I don’t plan on stepping on the scale as much as I normally do, it’s not healthy for me mentally, I’ll post 1 x per month and see where that gets me.
This will be my last year in my 40’s. I’m going to do my best to stay on track and achieve my goals and by me blogging each day, how sore I am, or how great I feel will all be part of my accountability to myself. I also want to enjoy this challenge, working towards something that brings positive results and a healthy lifestyle, not only for me, but for my husband too.
I will be following the Jeff Galloway Run / Walk / Run program. I’ve printed out the schedule and adjusted it for a 22 week training program. I’m at the studio on Monday’s and Wednesdays and I plan on keeping my “Sweat” workouts with Tamara on those days, Karate on Wednesday nights and I will also start going back to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays for additional strength training and cross training. Today is day 1 of the official training, we ran 2 miles at 1 min run / 1 min walk. I’m sure as time goes on, we’ll modify this to fit to our training. In Jeff Galloway’s book, there’s a Miracle Mile test that we are to do every X amount of weeks to determine what our Marathon times will be. Today we ran at 14 minute miles – though yesterday on our trial run, we ran 13 min miles. While I was running my half marathons, I was running an average of 12 min miles, so after reading this book, I know that we’ll make it up to 12-13 min miles doing this system hopefully with minimal bodily suffering. The point of the run / walk / run program is to minimize injury and promote faster recovery times. I also plan on taking 21 days of Yoga at my local Yoga studio to better understand my stretching process and luckily the Peloton app has great Yoga classes too that I won’t have to pay any additional money for.
So that’s it – Full Marathon by May 31 – Eating healthy (even on vacation) and sticking to the plan.
Day 1
SW: 147.5
2 mile Run/Walk + stretch before and after, Cross Training –
Time: 14 min mile
IF 16/8 – 8:00pm to 12:00pm
*will update food tonight
