A long run

Well Well... I have been slacking! SO much for trying to blog when I was home.... The Hubby just asked me if I have blogged lately? I obviously said "No, I for some reason am running out of ideas. Which is a HUGE bummer! I will call it writers block for now. However he did give me a good topic to write about for today. He suggested I talk a little about my marathon training. I am not sure if I mentioned I am training for a few marathons. The Windermere Marathon on May 14th then 3 weeks after that I am going to do the NewPort Marathon. Slightly crazy YES! However I think I can do it. The trick will be to be smart during my first marathon.

Here is what I am doing for training wise... Please remember this may not be the correct way or what works for YOU.

I am currently doing some weight training a few days a week along with a Turbo kickboxing class. But for this post I wanted to focus on my running.

From all the things I have been reading I have found that is important to get a "Long run" once a week. This helps build your endurance. Now a long run is longer then your daily runs. When I trained for Portland I increased my long runs 1 mile each week! It worked out FANTASTIC . With it being winter it gets dark much earlier so I just don't have the time to go out and run 15+ miles on a day I work. SO I have been increasing my extra long runs about 2 miles every other week and on the opposite week running about half the distance of my Long run.  So for example my next weekend long run is at least 10 miles, the week after that I will be running 20 miles.

For my daily runs (at least 2 other days a week) I run about 6miles. If I am feeling good I may squeeze in another mile. If I am on my shorter week I will try to do a 3 mile run somewhere as well. It's a lot of running and it could be to much. However I LOVE LOVE LOVE IT! The closer I get to my Marathon I'll start to cut back my miles just slightly.

I wanted to share my last long run experience!!! I ran it last Thursday March 10th.  18 miles! It was when we were home down in Southern Oregon. I was excited about doing it. I love my routes that I have in Spokane however it is always nice to mix it up and run somewhere else.

I Picked the good old bike path ( My mother was not to thrilled about the idea of me running on the bike path... alone). I appreciate her concern and completely understand, however I didn't feel like dodging traffic, I had my phone as well as my mace and well... I had the AWEFUL RAIN to keep all the bad guys away.

Yup that's right.,, it DOWN POURED for about the first half of my run. It decide to start about 1 mile in to my run and was down about mile 9! Lucky me :) To be completely honest, I really don't mind it. I ran my first Marathon ( Portland) last year in the pouring down rain. All you need is a hat. I am sure I looked rather ridiculous to most people who were in their nice warm cars and homes.  That's okay. I actually remember feeling good about it and a few times it dawned on me, maybe I inspired someone to at least go to the gym for the day..... MAYBE!

This was the first time I had run that far with out someone with me... I was slightly nervous. When you are running long distances all sorts of things can happen to you; not only all the physical stuff but there is a whole bunch of mental things that can happen to. Nothing to major as long as you are smart with your fluid and food intake (before and durning) your run.  For example on one of my last long runs before the Portland marathon around probably 22 or 23 miles. Zak was riding his bike with me the way he described what happened was an "emotional roller coaster" I am serious I went from being really Mad, to really sad to really Happy all in a matter of about 5 minuets." I believe I at one point said "talk to me" he asked me a question really to just start conversation and I responded with a loud "NO, you have to talk to me, tell me a story".   As you can see nothing to major but it can be an issue if you don't take care of yourself.  Everyone reacts very differently and needs a different amount of fluids and food for their runs. The little emotional Roller coasters can even happen on shorter runs. I think that has a lot to do with the endorphins. One of the things that can cause this is a lack of sugars and everything else your body needs to function ( this is on the longer runs). I know very very little about this part of running and training. Perhaps I will find a guest writer to share some more information on this topic.  To prevent weird stuff from happening to you mentally and physically people will drink water, gatorade and also have "GUS" or different kind of bars and all sorts of other things that I am not familiar with. These all help replenish what you loose during a long run.

Sorry  I went off topic. Back to my run... because I was running it by myself I wanted to make sure I had  enough of everything. my half way point was my dads office. I gave him one of my drinks so he would have it ready for me when I got there. As you can see long runs take A LOT of planning. It's not something you can just go do. Since I am training I am playing with different things. For ex. When I ran Portland. I would start at Mile 6 with a half of a banana then miles 9 a Gu then then mile 12 the other half of a banana and I think you get the point.  Carrying Bananas is not the most convenient thing especially during a marathon and when you are running by yourself.  So for this run I had my GU's  and a few Cliff bars. I also started out with 14 OZ of water and 14 OZ of gatorade. Then was able to refill at dads office.   It worked out GREAT!  The night before Mom, Dor and I went to a little Italian restaurant in Talent. I eat a delicious plate of Spaghetti! For Carbo loading :) There are 2 times I don't feel guilty about the amount of food I eat. Before a long run and after a long run.

The other thing I was trying to focus on was not starting out to fast. You know where you hear about people "hitting the wall" ONE of the many things that can cause that is starting out to fast :). It's all about pacing yourself. You all know I am a fan of the Run/ Walk method and that helps a lot.  Here is a little fun fact about my Portland Marathon... The last 6.2 miles I passed 327 people and only 2 people passed me! Thats a GREAT MARATHON! It all had to do with that first half of the marathon. I really paced myself.

Unfortunately it's been a week since this run so I don't remember the specifics about it other then I ran in in 3 hr 13 min. and I had planned on running 17miles and did 18 miles instead. Which means it was a GREAT RUN! I'll post a more detail description of a long run as soon as I am done with next one!

In the mean time... any suggestions on topics I should write about :)?