26 miles in my 26th year

Two years ago one of my friends approached me and asked if I would run the Nike Women's Half Marathon with her in San Francisco. I originally declined but since they do a lottery drawing I figured that we probably would not get in the race so I agreed to sign up.

I’m sure you all can probably guess, but that didn't happen. We got in and I had two choices: lose the $150 I paid and not do the race or attempt to run a half marathon. I decided to bite the bullet and start training to run 13 miles.

It was really hard. I basically started out not even being able to run 1 mile to running 10 miles on the weekends. It took about 3 months of training and during that time I slowly started to love running- who knew? When the time came to run our half marathon, I did it! Very slowly, but I did it. After my first race I knew I wanted to run more. I loved the way I felt (and looked!) since becoming a runner so I signed up for a few more half marathons.

Running a full marathon was never something I was interested in doing, until one of my girlfriends suggested that we run a full marathon this year because we are both 26 years old - 26 miles in our 26th year. I knew she was joking but I also thought the idea sounded awesome. How cool would it be to run a full marathon!? I somehow convinced my running friends to actually do it with me so hopefully we will be able to get into the NWM 2013 and run our first full marathon!

Since I have never run more than 13 miles I looked up training schedules online and found one that fit my running style. I modified it a little to incorporate my summer vacations and include my TRX training instead of the suggested cross training and I came up with the schedule above.

I was thinking it would be fun to include a weekly update on my training and hopefully connect with others who are training for a race as well. It will also be a nice way to hold myself accountable and hopefully get some tips on running longer distances. My first day of training started on Monday so I will give you guys an update next week.

For the runners out there, any tips on running a full marathon?