Marathon Training, and how

I sat down at my computer yesterday with a little time on my hands in the afternoon to look over a few running schedules for marathon prepping.  I have Jeff Galloway's book at home, but since I forgot to pick it up and bring it in with me, I decided to do some online research and I found a program that I think I'm going to try out.  It was listed online through the Houston Chronicle and can be found here at this link:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/run/971175.html

Anyway, since I've done one before and would like to consider myself in fairly decent enough shape, I figured I'd give their intermediate schedule a shot and modify it as I went a long due to teaching etc.

My class schedule is as such:
- Tuesday PM: Step Class
- Every other Thursday PM: Body Pump
- Ever other Saturday AM: Body Pump
- Sunday AM: 20-20-20

With three days taken up a week with training, I'm in kind of a pickle, especially since there will be weekends (every other weekend, in fact) where I'll be teaching twice, which wouldn't be an issue if I didn't also have to throw a long run in there, which can take up to 4 hours.

As I was charting out my modified running schedule, I started to realize that, uhoh.  I'm exactly 26 weeks away from the marathon.  Which, truth be told, is quite a lot of time (that's half a year, for those of you, who, like me, went "that's so soon!"), but since I have a serious goal this marathon, I need to be diligent.

My last/first/only marathon, I told Chadd that I wanted to run it in under 4:30 and he promised he'd take me to dinner wherever I wanted to go if I did it.  It was really a friendly competition, he later told me that he'd have taken me out to dinner no matter what considering that I'd just run a marathon.  The funny thing was that I really held on to that bet with him through the race, truly believing that I had to get a 4:30 (though through no reflect of who he is, had I actually been in a sane state of mind I'd have realized he was playing along).

I crossed the line at 4:22:34 and have never had such a strange surge of emotions go through me, exhaustion, elation, pride, extreme and momentary sadness, pain, confusion, clarity...and then I just sat my butt down and waited for someone to find me.

This time is going to be a bit different.  First of all, this isn't my first race (can you believe I did a marathon as my first race?  Talk about ambitious.  Thank God I didn't die...) and second, I've got a solid running history now.  I know what I can do, and I think I can do a sub 4.  If I literally came in at 4:00:00, I'd be okay with it, but a 3:59:59 would make me elated.

This puts me at needing to maintain just a little under a nine minute mile, meaning I need to train to stay at 9 and hope that race day, I get a speed surge.

But as I was writing out this program, realizing that it was 26 weeks away, and that my program literally started this week, I started to build a mental wall.  It doesn't help that I'm not really trained up for my half a week from this weekend...whatever.  4 miles should no longer scare me.  But I psyched myself out really badly for that run, had a miserable time, and barely made it home for just under 5 miles.

Tonight, after my appointment with my R.D., I have to go pull a solid 5, which means it's likely I won't be home until 8:30 tonight.  Must remain positive...and excited.  Here is, so far, the plan for the first 9 weeks of my plan, starting this week:

So.  Now to get to it...