Seattle Marathon Training Walk

Today was the day I started training for the Seattle Marathon.  The Seattle Marathon is always the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  This year the date falls on November 25th. 

I walked and jogged 7 miles in 107 minutes.  I would’ve jogged more but the day was hot, for me, and my body feels a bit tired.  My overall pace was 15:30 minute miles.  Not too shabby, considering I used to walk 18 – 20 minute miles.  I’m going to try to do all my training walks around this pace.

Training walks are supposed to be long, slow, distance walks.  The trouble I had with my last marathon is I never trained at a faster pace and I thought miraculously on marathon day, my body would move at a good clip, effortlessly.  My body did move at a faster pace, but I felt tired and worn out from the first few miles of the marathon.  I never experienced that on my previous marathons or half-marathons.  I don’t want that to happen this November.  I plan to jog 5 miles, 3 times a week.  I hope to get my body in good enough shape that jogging this distance will feel easy.  It will then be easier to go a bit faster during the marathon.  I also need to add some interval training in too.  Not sure how to do everything I want to accomplish.  I think I’ll worry about interval training in September.  Right now jogging 3 times a week is enough for me. 

I’m following a new training schedule.  It is John Bingham’s program.  John Bingham is known as the “penguin” in running circles.  He co-authored a book with Jenny Hadfield called, Marathoning for Mortals.  It talks about walking, walk/running, running/walking, and running marathons.  It gave me a new paradigm in the way I view marathons.  I cannot say enough good things about this book.  It also gave me the confidence to add running into my marathon training.  Marathoning for Mortals was published in 2003.  I wish it had not taken me 9 years to discover it.

The training program I used for my other marathons was from the Portland Marathon website.  Their program adds your mileage one or two miles a week, concurrently every week and you are never given a break until you hit your 20 mile walk.  The Bingham/Hadfield training schedule gives you a mileage break every other week.  Such as 14 miles one week, 8 miles the next, and 16 miles the following week.  It was never a problem for me before, but the right before the June marathon my mind was getting a bit burned out.  To be fair, I think a lot of this had to do with me adding the jogging in for the last months and the worry about the time limits.

Tomorrow is a day off for me and then Friday jogging 5 miles.