DAY ONE – ONE HOUR CROSS TRAINING
Well, my first day of training was already rough. I got up late. My alarm didn’t go off when it was supposed to. Lucky for me, I have a cat who can tell time. Nino was walking on my head, meowing, just a few minutes after my alarm should have woken me. “Day One of Marathon Training! How exciting!” “I don’t want to do it.” “I’d like to snooze my alarm and sleep another half hour, but I don’t trust that darn thing to get me up on time, so I better just get up.”

I got up, but putzed around on e-mail and wasted about a half-hour of my training time and tried to let myself out of it again. “It’s just cross-training, it’s not like it’s even running.” “I could skip it.” “Holy Cow, it’s only the first day and you’re already trying to cheat!” “Get your butt out of bed and get going!”

Prudence won and I got myself up, dressed, and onto my bicycle, headed for the office, where I would pick up my gym gear, walk to the gym, then do an hour of weight training. At the office, there were all sorts of important things I needed to do and I managed to waste another half-hour of my training time. After having wasted an hour total, I should really have been out of time to exercise, but I know that I can be difficult to get to the gym sometimes and I leave myself extra time for when I’m in these moods. So, I shifted a few inconsequential items on my calendar and I forced myself to get on over to the gym and do an hour of cross-training as my first marathon workout. Yeah!!! I did it!!! Day One is a success!

DAY TWO – SPEED – 1.1 MILES AT 7 MPH
I was so excited as I rode my bicycle home from work last night, there were 3 separate people out running at 9:00 pm. I know what they’re doing! Yesterday was exactly 20 weeks from the P.F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon. I know they were training for it.

Now I find myself thinking, “7 miles per hour? What on earth could I have been thinking when I wrote that?!” “That is FAST.” I hope I can do it.

I did it! Wow, it was hard, I couldn’t believe it. I am really in trouble. It’s only Day Two and I’m already struggling to complete my training requirements.

It took me about a quarter mile to get my speed up to 7 miles per hour and then it was all I could do to hold it there. I kept looking at the mileage to see how close I was to my 1.1 mile goal. One tenth of a mile. Two tenths of a mile. “You’ve got to be joking! This is gonna take all day!” “I can’t do it.” Three tenths of a mile. “This is ridiculous! I’ve got… how many more tenths of a mile? Eleven minus three. How many is that? I can’t even think!” Four tenths of a mile. “Maybe I can do it, but how many are left?” “Eleven minus four. I can’t believe I cannot even do simple math at this pace, this is insane.” Five tenths of a mile. “Wait, I know this one, that’s a HALF MILE. I actually have a half-mile in. I may be able to make it, but I have six tenths of a mile to go. Oh no! That’s more than I’ve already done. I’m not gonna make it.”

Then I got temporarily into “The Zone” where the running seems effortless and the distance just clicks away. However, it was very, very, very short-lived and I was thrust out of “The Zone” with at least three tenths of a mile to go. “This is so ridiculous. I don’t know how I think I’m gonna run 26 miles if I can’t even run one.” “Get a hold of yourself, this is your first week of training. Training has to start at the beginning, it can’t start at the end. One mile is enough for today and if you do it, it’s as good as doing the whole marathon. Just do this 1.1 and congratulate yourself for refusing to quit.”

Aw, man, still two tenths of a mile left. You know, that’s just really not that far, but at 7 miles per hour, it seemed really far. I started counting down from .18. Seventeen…Sixteen…Fifteen…Fifteen…Fifteen? How can it still say Fifteen?!?! Oh, wait, there’s 14, and 13. Oh man, I’m gonna make it. Twelve. Eleven. Oh, can I please be done now? Please?!? Ten… Ten… Don’t look again or it will still say Ten… Nine…Eight… WILL THIS NEVER END?! Five. What? Five? How did that happen? Where did Seven and Six go? Oh wait, there’s the Three, and the Two, and the ONE! I’m done. I’m done. Done, done, done, done done! I did it.

Man, this is gonna be a LONG 20 weeks!

DAY THREE – RACE PACE – 1.4 MILES AT 5.25 MPH
I was very encouraged by my run today. It was EASY! A speed of 5.25 mph was not hard to maintain. I found myself jogging along thinking, “Oh man, is this easy! I could do this all day.” Then I thought, “Hang on a second, I am gonna have to do it all day in January – well not all day, but a lot of a day – five hours or maybe six. I don’t know about that.” Then I got scared thinking about having to keep that pace up for five hours.

However, I calmed myself by focusing on the fact that this is still the beginning of my training and the fact that I really was not having to exert much effort at all to keep the pace. I told myself that I’ll just continue to build my stamina and strength until 26 miles is as easy as 2 miles and that I’ll just go ahead and enjoy the fact that today was easy. Something tells me that lots of other days aren’t gonna be this easy. I better enjoy the easy ones while I still have them!

DAY FOUR – EASY – 1.5 MILES at 4.6 MPH
I’m looking forward to today’s run. It sounds ridiculously easy. I fear I may be doing something wrong if training is this easy. Oh wait, I looked at Saturday’s run and it’s a half mile at 7.5 miles per hour. That will likely kill me, so I better just enjoy today’s easy run.

Today was a total piece of cake! Shuffling along at 4.6 miles per hour isn’t even like work. My heart rate only went up to about 125, which is nowhere near where it would be if I was really working. However, it was boring. I wanted to go faster to get it over with more quickly, but I forced myself to stay at that pace because there must have been some reason I put it into my training schedule that way. I will need to have some easy runs to avoid getting burnt out.

That speed is so slow that if I would run the whole marathon at that speed, I may not even finish in the alloted time. It would be almost seven hours of running and that doesn’t leave much extra time for restroom breaks or shoe-tying or whatever. So, it’s a nice diversion in my training schedule, but I can’t get too used to running at that pace, though, ’cause it simply ain’t gonna cut it.

DAY FIVE – REST

DAY SIX -PACER – .5 MILE AT 7.5 MPH = 8 MINUTE MILE PACE
A half mile. Half a mile. That’s nothing, right? Old ladies and small children can easily walk a half mile. You walk a half-mile at the mall just getting to and from your car. A half mile cannot be that difficult, so I told myself I was just gonna do it.

I pushed myself to get up to speed a little too quickly and I started doing 7.5 mph a little bit before I was really ready, but I really just wanted to get it over with quickly, so I didn’t take the speed back down and give myself more time to warm up, I just kept going.

Well, not long into my measly little half mile, I was already starting to struggle. “I cannot believe this, I’m not going to be able to do a half mile? This is ridiculous!” The distance was crawling by at what seemed like an impossibly slow pace, considering how hard I was working and I wondered if I was going to have to give up, start over, and warm up properly.

“Distract yourself, Marlo.” “Look around. Try to see what’s on the gym T.V.’s” I realized that at the speed of 7.5 mph, I had a very hard time reading the closed captioning and that I had to look away from the T.V.s or risk crashing and flying off the treadmill. However, that’s when I noticed him…

Val Kilmer! There was a movie on a distant T.V. that had an extreme close-up of Val’s face and I knew that if they would just keep that up on the screen, I could stay distracted long enough to finish my half-mile. Then I wanted to laugh at myself, having to look at some movie star to get me through a little run.

On and on the time went. “Like, how long can it take to run a half mile?” So I looked at the time and it was all of about 6 minutes. “I don’t know how I think I’m gonna do a marathon if I can’t even run six minutes.” Here come the negative thoughts. They’ll have to be stopped before they get me. Focus!

The gym music began playing Judas Priest, “You Got Another Thing Coming,” which was actually the song my high school class chose as our class song. Of course, attending a religious school, there was no way Judas Priest was going to make it into the yearbook, so we listed it as being performed by “J.P. and the Gang.” Thinking of that made me laugh and put me back in touch with rebellious teenage days and I found determination to finish out the half-mile with no further thoughts of quitting.

I continued to run, slower, for quite some time to cool down and I ended my workout feeling really good and proud and hopeful and scared. I feel like I can do this if the workouts don’t increase on me too dramatically too quickly. Wish me luck!

DAY SEVEN – LONG – 2.1 MILES AT 6.35 MPH
Victory!!! I did it! I made it through Week One and I did all my workouts as planned and I didn’t cheat and I didn’t skip and I didn’t fail. What a relief! I will have to look back on this week to remind myself of what success feels like in the upcoming weeks when the workouts get harder and harder.

One thing I learned today is that impatience is gonna kill me. I was supposed to do my run today at 6.35 mph and I’m just not quite fast enough to just tear out of my front door at 6.35 mph. I have to warm up a little bit to get up to that speed, but I don’t want to ‘exercise’ any more than I really have to, and jogging at 4-5 mph to ‘warm up’ sure seems like ‘exercise’ to me, so I just sorta walked around my driveway a little bit, then tore off down the street.

The good news for me was that I was going too fast right from the get-go. That gave me encouragement to think that I might be able to make it. I slowed down to my target speed, but then I really had trouble holding it and I started losing speed and worrying, again, that I really wasn’t going to make it. I must have looked at my speed 100 times during this 20-minute run, trying to make sure I kept it at around 6.3.

It was really hard for the final 3/4 mile. I thought I was gonna puke, I wanted to stop, I panicked that today was supposed to be my ‘long’ run and it’s only 2.1 miles, how do I expect to do a 26.2 REALLY LONG run if I can’t even do 2 miles, and blah blah blah, all that stuff your mind does when it wants the body to quit running, but I kept going. I’m glad there weren’t many cars because I was half delerious and I could have easily been hit by a car on a busy street.

When I got home, I had to walk for some time to cool down and I made myself do my stretches. That is another thing I always resist. It just seems like more ‘exercise’ to me, but it’s just foolish not to stretch after a run and this is gonna be a long 20 weeks and far too easy to injure myself if I don’t start off, right from the beginning, doing things right.

And, come to think of it, it’s only 19 weeks now!