In the past, I’ve done most of my marathon training solo. But, since I haven’t been running consistently on my own the past few months, I decided I needed a little extra push to keep me on track. It was time to mix things up, and get out of my comfort zone. So, I signed up for a marathon training program with a local running store, Fleet Feet in Gaithersburg.
The program will last 18 weeks with a goal race of the Marine Corp Marathon or any other fall marathon – which is perfect for my plan to run NYC on November 6th. The group meets twice a week on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings (for the long runs). Yesterday evening was the first group run, and I was really nervous heading over to the store. My anxiety soon dissipated when we separated into pace groups, and started out for a 4 mile easy run. I opted to start out in a slower group, considering I haven’t been running much recently. My pace group was all women, and I was excited to learn that, like me, two of them will be running the NYC Marathon this fall!
Although the run was an “easy” four miler, it was a little challenging in the heat. I’m used to doing a lot of my hot weather running inside on a treadmill, so dealing with the summer weather will be interesting.
After the run, I picked up my welcome bag which included a gear check list, some energy gels/nutrition, and a very cool tech shirt.
Our next group run is a 6 miler on Saturday morning at 6:30 AM. (No more sleeping in on the weekend for the next 18 weeks.) I’ll keep you posted as the training continues!
