Today I begin marathon training.

There I go, throwing out the gauntlet. Using the m-word. I’m not sure if I’m actually going to run a marathon, but I’m going to start a marathon training cycle. Last year I had planned to run Grandma’s Marathon and had signed up for the free training emails. I had a strange, minor injury to my hip that wouldn’t go away and so I scrapped the idea. Plus I wasn’t really that dedicated to begin with. I saved the training emails for future use, and today’s the day to start the 18-week plan in order to sync the plan up with the race date (June 20th). So, I’m diving in with a 2 mile run this evening, as indicated on the plan. (Don’t worry, I had an unplanned rest day on Saturday because I felt gross.)

Why train for a marathon if I’m not sure I’m going to run it? I don’t know. It’s something to do. I do want to run marathons in the future, so I do want to give a training cycle a try. I’m just not sure I’ll be able to dedicate enough time to the long runs, due to homework. It will be warmer and lighter out later by the time many of those long runs come along, but I’ll also be in the thick of exams, projects, and general fatigue from yet another grinding semester as an engineering student, so I am going to have to play it by ear.

I have given myself til March 31st to decide if I’m going to enter, as the entry fee increases again on April 1st. I might have to extend that date and just eat the higher entrance fee, because the training time commitment increases quite a bit in the middle weeks of the program. I will have to see how the first 6 weeks go and how my body and my schedule handle the increased mileage.

A prescribed two mile run sounds like a great end to my day… at 8 pm. Today is the first day of the rest of my semester, I guess.