Not Gonna Lie, 15 Miles Kicked My Butt

As you may have guessed today’s training run was a 15 mile run.  The first 10 miles felt great.  Miles 11 and 12 were good but I started to feel a bit slow, and the last two or three were tough.  I was very glad to be with my running class, as I’m once again not sure I could have convinced myself to finish that run on my own, but of course I’m glad that I did.

Partly due to a poor night’s sleep I dropped back to the 15 minute pace group for this run, and I am also glad that I did that.  We were a little bit fast, overall, so really it worked out so that I was at a good training pace according to Galloway’s recommendations.

Right now I can feel that I’ll be a bit sore tomorrow and my right IT band is a bit tight.  I’ll work on rolling that out as best I can today, and I’ll try not to sit down for too long at a stretch to help keep things from stiffening up too much.

But what I know for sure, right this minute, is that I can do a half marathon and then some. That’s a good feeling. And there is plenty of time between now and the Marathon in July to build up to the full 26.2 miles.  97 days, to be exact.

Next week is a 4 mile run with a Magic Mile, and then the following week is our 17.5 mile run.  Two weeks later, we’ll run our 20 mile run, and then our schedule changes a bit so that there are two short (5 and 6 mile) runs before the 23 miler.  We will be running a full 26 miles prior to the marathon, as well.

At this point, I anticipate that after a post-marathon recovery period where I run short distances for a few weeks, I will likely continue to run long runs pretty frequently, and endeavor to stay in shape for a new goal race next year.  It may seem a bit insane, but I think I’m setting my sights on the 2013 Pengelly Double Dip.  It’s a shorter race than the marathon, but quite challenging in its own way, and I could still do the 2013 marathon afterward.

Even though today’s run kicked my butt, I still learned that I can run(/walk/run) 15 miles.  And the way I see it, if I can do 15 miles, 17.5 & 20 won’t be that much harder, and if I can do 20 miles, then 23 & 26.2 won’t be much harder than that.  The Galloway training method of adding miles on slowly, in small chunks, really works well for me and lots of other people as well.