As much as I love Boston, I’m thrilled to be back home in New York. Today at work we had our “town hall,” which was our big staff meeting. It was kind of boring… so I made up for it by eating everything in sight. Since it was a buffet, that meant bad news for my diet. I started out kind of okay for breakfast… I got a big bowl of fresh fruit, and then a small chocolate croissant (estimated at 300 cals). Which isn’t terrible. For lunch, I opted for a huge salad with a teeny bit of dressing, and half a turkey sandwich. I took the top of the roll and the cheese off the sandwich, and also wiped off all the mayo. Then I made my fatal error and got half a brownie and a small cookie.
BAD idea. The brownie was absolutely incredible – one of the moistest and best brownies I’ve had. The cookie (oatmeal raisin) was almost moist and amazing. I ended up going back up for two more brownie halves and three more oatmeal raisin cookies. I also sampled bites of the peanut butter cookies and sugar cookies, but they weren’t nearly as good. By the time I was done with all this, I had a stomachache… yet I still wanted more. I rationalized all this by deciding that I would go for a run later in the afternoon when the conference ended. Definitely a bad idea – exercise does burn calories, but I don’t really trust it to balance out because you never really know how much you’re burning. Plus, getting in the habit of rationalizing things is not going to help me lose weight.
However, my afternoon run was amazing. I chose to go down the path next to the Hudson River, and it was absolutely gorgeous. A bit windy, but nothing like Sunday in the Bronx, so it felt easy 🙂 It was a balmy 47 degrees out (that may seem cold to those of you in warm climates, but it seriously felt like summer after the cold spell we’ve been having), and the sky was a beautiful blue with some pretty white clouds and the sun streaming through. Running along the river was also really peaceful – I loved looking out at the river, and there were these pretty grasses growing along it that reminded me of the beach. I did 7.2 miles at an 8:58 pace, and it felt like such an easy and short run. Funny how what used to be a long run a year ago is now an easy quick run!
I think I’m ready to start training for a marathon. If I can do a medium run (like the 7 miles I did today) once during the week, and a long run (13 miles and up, tapering up to really long distances) once on weekends, and then just make sure to get some kind of workout in the other days… hopefully that would get me ready. I think I’m going to pull out my dusty copy of The Non-Runners Marathon Trainer and see what that plan is – when I first started browsing the book, I really liked it (even though I never followed through with it). The cool thing is, I’m not really a non-runner anymore 🙂 Maybe I’ll find a different training plan that’s more geared to my level – I’m open to suggestions.
I think I definitely want to run the NYC Marathon, but not as my first, for two reasons. One is that I’ve heard it’s not a great one to choose as your first, two is that I’m not guaranteed so who knows if I can get in via lottery (and I don’t really have the time to fundraise), and three is that I don’t want to wait till November! I’m thinking about targeting the Country Music Marathon for my first? I love listening to country while I run, so it could be fun, and I’d love to do something big with a lot of crowd support. I got a copy of a marathon travel guide from the library, so maybe I’ll read through that this weekend and really go to town on my “races I want to run” category.
I’m looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend – lots of reading/TV/cleaning catch-up. Hope everyone else had a fantastic Friday!
yay!! I’m trying to train for my first…the long runs suckkkkk though!
Choose a fall marathon if you can-the training is usually 16 weeks, and you’d need to keep a base of at least 20 mpw for a few weeks before that…so the Country Music one would be way too close.
NYC was my first marathon-and I wouldn’t have chosen another one for my first…great to have the home-field advantage, and I was able to train on parts of the course. Try your luck at the lottery-hey, you never know!! 🙂
Also-the advantage of choosing a fall marathon is that NYRR caters more towards those in terms of scheduling…two organized long training runs in August and September, a lot of longer races in September and October that you can use as a long run…I always planned my long runs around whenever there was an organized long run-better to have support if you can swing it!!
that’s my two cents-take it for what it’s worth 🙂
I will definitely take your advice to heart… my thinking was just that I’m already comfortable with 13 miles, so it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to double it? I figured 13 miles is the halfway point of most plans so I’d prob need 8 weeks of training. Thoughts on that?
Apparently that weather decided to skip right over me – sheesh! Sun’s out today, hopefully I can follow in your footsteps and crank out a good run today!
Good luck and happy training!
oops, made a mistake in my previous comment…training is usually 18 weeks, not 16…for example, the training for NYCM would start in early July…
I already had quite a few halfs under my belt when I trained for my first marathon-but in order to complete the marathon distance, you definitely need some 18 and 20-milers and you need to build up to them gradually. Here’s some info that may help…
Also, I guess it depends on what your goals are. Do you want to just “complete” the distance-or do you want to run it to the best of your ability? If it’s the latter-definitely take the time to do a training program right. (FWIW-13 milers usually come up earlier in training than halfway-I had a 14-miler on the schedule 3 weeks in.)
Good luck-whichever one you choose!! 🙂