Day One!

Today was my first official day of training, and I'm happy to report that it went well. I was thinking I might be cuckoo for having chosen this particular training plan, because it began today with a Tempo run - 6 miles at 8:45 pace. 8:45 is very fast for me - if I ran a whole marathon at this pace I'd run it in under 4 hours, and my goal is 4 hours (which is about 9:10 pace). The purpose of the shorter "Tempo" run is to run much faster than marathon pace, then to do your longer runs at much slower than marathon pace - and basically on race day you meet somewhere in the middle (and you don't burn out from running your long runs at marathon pace). Does that make sense?

I'm coming clean here - I don't run for speed when I'm not training. When I'm not training, I run here and there at a comfortable pace (which is like 9:30-10 minute miles). So running 6 miles at 8:45 pace on my very first day of training... wow... tough! But I did it! Actually, the first mile I ran in 7:30, and the last few miles I ran at 9:00 pace. It all evens out in the end. It was a beautiful day today, and running this evening was a wonderful way of ending the last 4 days which have been incredibly busy and stressful.

Ragnar is this weekend, and I'm running 19.2 miles total over the course of 2 days, but I'm taking it at a comfortable pace. It should be fun!