Sunday, July 6, 2008

1 down; 17 to go!

I have finished my first official week of training! Today I ran my short run, thereby completing week #1 of my 18 week training program. I'm pumped. The ING New York City Marathon is 17 weeks from today! Wow.

I did a great little run across the GWB today. I don't know why, but until last night I hadn't really thought about running across the bridge, but when I was looking at various routes on MapMyRun.com I realized that it made perfect sense. I was aiming to run 3 miles today, a nice little short run at a faster pace after yesterday's long, slow run. I started out and immediately I knew that I was in for it. My legs were still pretty sore from the long run yesterday, so I decided not to push myself too much and just to enjoy a nice jog across the bridge.

I enjoyed running across the river and I got to the entrance of Palisades Park where I'm sure there are paths, etc, so I look forward to using this route more when I go for longer runs, and despite the fact that today was humid (not too hot though) it was a really enjoyable experience.

When I got home and mapped out my route, however, I realized that I ended up running 3.66 miles, more than I had thought, in a time of about 30 minutes. This translates to an 8:13 pace/mile . . . not too bad for the day after a long run. I felt like I was going much slower than that.

I'm feeling pretty good about my training right now. I'm reading my training book pretty religiously these days and I'm feeling pretty fast, and I'm getting pumped for the marathon in November. I feel like I've been working towards this for so long and I can't wait to finally be increasing my mileage significantly and having completed my first week is very exciting! It's funny how ready I felt for the 8 mile run yesterday and how ready I feel already for a 10 miler, and I still have almost two weeks until I run it! I'm really excited.

**Author's Note**
I use the phrase "long run" pretty liberally here . . . it is relative as far as I'm concerned. A true "long run" is about 18 miles, but I'm not there yet!

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