Marathon training

I decided to plan out my preparation from the moment I officially signed up for Vancouver's BMO Marathon. That has given me 25 weeks to prepare, and I'm now 3 weeks in. The past two winters I haven't had any particular running goal, and so weather and life and the inaccessibility of trails have conspired to push running out of my routine for days and weeks on end. This year it's a different matter entirely.

This year I'm running no matter what. I haven't missed a scheduled run yet and I'm thrilled. But gosh, a lot of creativity, variety and determination are required! Once I get started, though, I'm good. Here are my last few runs. You can see how much things have varied!

Distance	Temp	Run Type	Conditions	Footwear
8 km	-2ºC	Road	Compact snow	Minimus
23 km	0ºC	Road/trail	Compact snow / asphalt	Minimus
3.5 km	-5ºC	Road	Asphalt	Miminus
7 km	-7ºC	Road	Snowing / windy	Merrell Lithe Glove
5 km	-3ºC	Trail	Deep snow	Merrell Lithe Glove
16 km	-1ºC	Road	Icy asphalt	Minimus
7 km	+1ºC	Trail	Deep slush / raining	Merrell Lithe Glove
5 km	+2ºC	Road	Asphalt	Vibram Five Fingers
2 km	+2ºC	Road	Asphalt	Bare feet

The holidays have given me plenty of time to run and to think and read about running. I've resolved to keep the pace on the majority of my runs very slow, and to push my weekly mileage higher. I've only run more than 50k a week a few times. I need to get my mileage to that level soon (I'm in the 40's now), and then keep raising it to the 70 - 80 km/week level by early April.

One hundred and twenty-eight days and counting.