Training for Marathon #2!

July 1, 2022 By Megan Health and Wellness

As many of you probably know by now, I’m in the midst of training for marathon #2! Which if you had told me five years ago this is what I would be doing today, I would have laughed and laughed and laughed. 🙂 Never in a million years did I think I would even run ONE marathon, let alone want to do it again!

This weekend marks the end of week 5 of training and I’m – knock on wood – still feeling great. I’ve gotten in two double digit long runs so far, and this weekend I’ll be doing another – up to 13 miles already! And even though it’s a pretty big time commitment and it takes a lot of effort, I’m really enjoying it. I think it helps tremendously that I’m not the only one training right now. There’s five of us from WARC who are planning to run the Twin Cities Marathon in October so we’ve been doing our training runs together as well which makes such a huge difference.

Last year, I had to do my 14 mile run by myself, and let me tell you: it sucked. It felt like it lasted ten times longer than all my other training runs, I had no one to talk to or push me, and I probably procrastinated as long as possible since I was really dreading having to do it myself. I’m glad it was the only long run I had to do alone, and I knew then that if I planned on doing another marathon and didn’t have a team to train with, it wasn’t going to happen. That’s why I’m so glad I have the people of WARC to help keep me accountable!

Along with getting those long runs in, marathon training also consists of doing hill and speed workouts. We’ve been trying to focus on doing these every other week, so one week we’ll do a hill workout and the next we’ll do a speed workout, and so on. This week was speed work week and luckily the Freedom Day 5k was also this week, so we used the race as our speed workout. It was only the second speed workout I’ve done in training this far, but it felt really good.

The race was hot, but it was breezy, so it wasn’t unbearable. I kept reminding myself this was my speed work for the week and I really had to make it count – and did I ever! I actually PR’d at this race, running my fastest ever 5k at a time of 25 minutes 48 seconds. I’ve never broken 26 minutes before, and my goal for the longest time has been to break 25 minutes, and I’m getting closer!! It’s not the fastest time out there, nor will I be winning any races anytime soon, but I’m still pretty freaking proud of myself. Especially for someone who HATED running only a few years ago.

For this race, they hose you down with squirt guns as you cross the finish line. Definitely felt good with that heat!

I was talking to Dan about the race last night telling him I was pretty happy with how it went, and he said he was really excited for me and he had even noticed a difference in my running. I told him my goal of breaking 25 minutes, and he told me he had no doubt I’d be able to do it before too long. My favorite was when he told me he could tell I was getting better at running because he said – and I quote – “you definitely don’t complain about running as much as you used to.” HAHA! That’s definitely true. Who knew it would become something I enjoy doing so much!?

Anyway, I’m pretty pumped to keep training with some wonderful people and continue to improve my running skills!