Well, I’ve done it. I’ve gone and registered for a full marathon. I have 139 days and a few hours till the race begins, which I’m hoping is plenty of time to build up my mileage and get in position to finish (of paramount importance!) and post a respectable time.
What’s a “respectable time”? Many months ago, when the idea of running a full marathon, someday, first crossed my mind, I thought that if I ever found myself attempting such a thing that I’d like to break four hours. Why four hours? Mostly it’s because I remember being impressed by one of my classmates, who ran cross country, finishing the L.A. Marathon in just under four hours our senior year. It seemed impossibly fast to me, back then, to know someone who could run so far in such a time.
Actually, my goal is just a little more ambitious than breaking four hours. What I’d really like to do is to finish with an average pace of sub-nine minutes. Nine minutes a mile for 26.2 miles translates to 3:55:48, or not much faster than four hours. Based on the Runner’s World calculator, my time in the half-marathon suggests I should be able to run a full marathon in 3:36:58. That seems a bit ambitious to me, but I’d be ecstatic if I essentially split the difference and posted a time around 3:45:00.
I’ve done a fair job of maintaining my mileage in the two weeks since the half-marathon. I considered various marathon training programs, but I think I’m going to have to adapt one to my needs, since I’m starting from a baseline roughly halfway into most of the programs I’ve found. I have the wiggle room to increase my mileage gradually, throwing in the occasional week where my mileage remains the same. I also have the flexibility to add even longer runs (most programs seem to make the longest pre-race run twenty miles), or to not feel like I’m going to suffer if something comes up again to keep me from running for a few days.
So, we’ll see how it goes. At the very least, I now have a specific objective around which to plan my runs, which provides some nice structure.
I can’t promise that I’ll post daily updates on my run like I did during my half-marathon training. I don’t know that it’s that interesting, but also it feels like I’ve taken to blogging only about running (maybe I’ve just run out of things to say). But, presumably there will be progress reports and updates.
Hurray! You will do a great job with the marathon just like you did with the half-marathon. Good luck!