First day of training: No running

Today is about 18 weeks out from the Philly marathon and my official training kicks off. I'll roughly following Hal Higdon's Intermediate two schedule. I followed this schedule exactly for my last marathon (also Philly) and was happy with the results. My time was about 20 minutes faster than my first 26.2, I didn't get hurt and I had fun.

I need to reverse the Saturday and Sunday runs in order to fit them in the family/work schedule. This is fine because the goal is to run an ultra in the late spring and those plans call for both Saturday and Sunday long runs. So this fall, if I have the time on Sunday, I might add a few miles on to those runs. For the past four weeks I've been doing my longest run for the week on Saturdays to get ready. I also plan to add a few miles per week on to the base intermediate two schedule whenever I feel like it (have the time and no pain). The schedule will be the minimum I plan to run but I'll be fine with it if I don't do more.

My goals are: 1) Have fun in training 2) Don't get hurt 3) Finish the marathon 4) knock off another 20 minutes from my last marathon*.

*I'm not too interested in speed because I would rather run for 3 hours slow than run for 2 hours at a faster pace. I do want to get a bit faster just to have a better chance at finishing within cut-off times for any ultras I end up doing.