Training for the Marathon begins

Well I finally started the long awaited training program for the Disney Marathon. I ran 3 miles on Thursday and another 3 miles on Saturday morning. And yes my legs are feeling just a little sore today, especially after skating practice. I plan on running again tomorrow and to try to run at least run every other day if possible. Kent is following an 18 week training program developed by Hal Higdon. I am going to try to follow it as much as I can, but probably on different days since I will not be able to do my long runs on Saturdays.

Since I am training for an endurance race, I decided to try a different approach than normal and pace myself using my heart rate monitor. Usually when I run my heart rate averages around 175, but that is pushing pretty hard for 2-3 miles as I would in a 5K race. Now I am going to try to keep my heart rate around the 150 mark and see how I feel. I tried this both times this week and it seemed to work much better for me even though my rate did start climbing towards the end of my run. I did sort of expect that too. I feel it is all related to conditioning. I am definitely in good condition but not really for running. At least not yet. I hope, in the future, to see my heart rate stay at the 150 mark for my entire run. We'll just have to see how that works out.