From Humble Beginnings

I signed up for a marathon yesterday. I have no idea what I'm doing! I have eighteen weeks to train.

What do you know; eighteen weeks is exactly the length of most Hal Higdon's marathon training plans. He's a fast old dude so he must know what he is talking about, right? I'm not training for the Olympics here, only my first marathon. Being a regular human and not a magical unicorn, this plan will certainly suit me fine. I chose Novice 1; it fits because I'm a noob.

Today is my first training run. I converted the distances to kilometers - I operate on the metric system, yo. The distances are rounded up because I'm not a wuss. 

WEEK	MON	TUE	WED	THU	FRI	SAT	SUN
1	Rest	5	5	5	Rest	10	Cross
2	Rest	5	5	5	Rest	12	Cross
3	Rest	5	7	5	Rest	9	Cross
4	Rest	5	7	5	Rest	15	Cross
5	Rest	5	9	5	Rest	17	Cross
6	Rest	5	9	5	Rest	12	Cross
7	Rest	5	10	5	Rest	20	Cross
8	Rest	5	10	5	Rest	Rest	Half Marathon
9	Rest	5	12	7	Rest	17	Cross
10	Rest	5	12	7	Rest	25	Cross
11	Rest	7	13	7	Rest	26	Cross
12	Rest	7	13	9	Rest	20	Cross
13	Rest	7	15	9	Rest	29	Cross
14	Rest	9	15	9	Rest	23	Cross
15	Rest	9	17	9	Rest	33	Cross
16	Rest	9	13	7	Rest	20	Cross
17	Rest	7	10	5	Rest	13	Cross
18	Rest	5	7	4	Rest	Rest	Marathon

Source: Hal Higdon (http://www.halhigdon.com/training/51137/Marathon-Novice-1-Training-Program)

 

I was the worst at most sports in school. The slowest of the slow. The worst in anything that required moving quickly. This was in 2003. In August 2012 I started couch to 5k and finished in the requisite eight weeks. After that I kept running. I'm a lazy sod so I wasn't out in the streets three times a week, every week.

Lazy sods need a plan.

The Dublin Marathon takes place on October 28th, 2013. Let's do this thing.

Source: xkcd (http://xkcd.com/526/)