NJ Marathon Training: Week 1

My second marathon training cycle! It has arrived! At least, sort of. For the 2019 Novo Nordisk New Jersey Marathon (henceforth referred to as the NJ Marathon because I can’t write all those words every time), I’ll be following the plan created by my running club, the New York Harriers. Their marathon training plan is 12 weeks long, but because my last marathon training plan was 16 weeks – and January 7 marked 16 weeks to the NJ Marathon –  I’ve already begun thinking that I am officially “training.”

The Need for Speed

I don’t know if it’s the whole 7 hours of sleep I got last night or the fact that I wore new racing shoes this morning, but I did what I’m pretty sure is my fastest 5K training run of all time with an average pace of 8:40 (splits: 7:58, 8:50, 8:53, 7:51 for the last 0.1). Those splits are off balance because the first mile is a steady slight downhill while the rest of the run is a mix of hills, mostly up.

Typically my 3-mile runs – which I usually do as close to 5K race pace as possible without going full out – fall somewhere between 8:50 to 9:10 pace. So this is a noticeable improvement. I also might do a local 5K this weekend, so I had that in mind.

A Chili Is In the Air

I LOVE NEW STUFF. It’s so rare I get new stuff, let alone three new stuffs in one day.

I wore my new Saucony Guides today. They felt great. It’s been (gulp) a year since I replaced my running shoes. I know this is WAY too long. Don’t do this. Last year, I’d wanted to track my gear in mapmyrun, so the first day I ran in my new shoes I added them to the app. But I didn’t realize you had to manually select them every time you ran. So once I realized the app hadn’t tracked them for several runs, I gave up and never kept track.

Nu Shooz

My mother gave me a gift card to Super Runners Shop for my birthday this year, which was in June, and I’m very excited to have finally stopped procrastinating and used it.

My last two pairs of running shoes were Sauconys and I’ve been really happy with them. For years before that, I was a Nike girl – mostly because I just liked the design. But a trip to a specialty running store a few years ago changed all that when the salesperson analyzed my feet and running style and determined that Sauconys were the way to go. (Apparently Nikes tend to run on the thinner side, while my feet tend to run on the wider side.)