I started running a couple years ago, and after surviving three half marathons, I’m finally taking on the big challenge. I have signed up to run the Quad City Marathon in September. 26.2 miles.
I have friends who are endurance athletes (50 mile runs, Iron Man, etc) so I’m surrounded by people who have run this distance a number of times, which is a benefit for me. I have taken their advice and I’m motivated by the insane level of endurance that they can accomplish.
After talking to them and reading as much as I could, I decided to following the Novice marathon training plan by Hal Higdon. It’s one of the most popular training plans out there, and he’s one of the "experts" on the subject. If it’s worked for so many before, it can work for me!
I’ve taken the Novice I training plan and put it up as My Marathon Training Plan on Google Spreadsheets. I will update it as I go for the next 18 weeks. For the first week, I was thinking of following the Novice II plan, so I did a bit more. Then I decided to just follow the Novice I plan as-is, so I adjusted.
Hal Higdon talks about using a walking strategy to complete a first marathon. Although I hesitate to plan to walk during a "run", I have decided to take his advice and walk through each aid station. I did some simple analysis of a Marathon Walk Strategy and was surprised to see that adding in walking doesn’t really affect the final time for the pace I plan to try for, so it’s not like it’s going to add a half hour to my finish time or something. It seems to make sense, so that’s my strategy.
So hopefully 17 weeks from now I will be crossing the finish line, a proud first-time marathoner. Wish me luck!