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This time it’s another fun run – Groupon are/were having a discount entry of $20 for the Color Me Rad run in Dublin, about 1 mile away from my house. I wasn’t going to do this race originally as I’d already signed up for the Color Run in July but at $20 it’s a bargain.

I’m also considering doing the full Nationwide Childrens Hospital Columbus Marathon *gulp* in October. The Capcity Half Marathon was easier than I expected (but not easy) and the fact that I ran the whole way means I’m pretty positive about my chances but it is still double my furthest distance yet and training would involve running throughout the summer! I know I’ll sign up to do the half at least, but I am considering the full. Running it would complete another thing off my bucket list and better doing it now before I get *too* old 😉 especially as I’ve missed the “doing a marathon by the time I’m 40”. October 2013 would probably be a better time to do it but it seems such a long time away. Jamie from the Turtles group posted about running the full yesterday, and I asked for more information on the training plan which she kindly sent and I’ve posted below. Looking at the length of the runs they don’t seem *too* bad – both of the novice ones top out at 20miles – which at my 11 min pace for that distance would *only* take 3hrs to run which would be doable on a Saturday. Now if I got up early (5am) and started running, I’d be done by 8-30-9am and then I’d have 24 hours to sleep and recover for church the next day!

Hal Higdon’s Novice 1 plan –for new runners, this will get you to the finish line, if your goal is to finish–regardless of time.

Hal Higdon’s Novice 2 –if you have a time goal in mind:
From everything I’ve read, your mileage during the week, should equal or be greater than your weekend long run. In this plan, the 20 mile weekend run only has 15 miles during the week for support. I’m not sure I’d go with this one, but with a little tweaking, this could be a good plan.

Marathon Rookie’s training program — Another one.

Hal Higdon’s Intermediate 1 – This might be good for you if you’ve run marathons before and aren’t new to the game.

As we’re about 5 months away from the Marathon there is still plenty of time to make my mind up and the registration fee doesn’t increase until the end of June so I have a month to decide which one I am going to do. The training plans call for four runs a week which is more than I have done in the past but they don’t seem to be that far off the runs that I normally do (at least for the midweek runs in the first half of the plan). Therefore for June I’m going to try running the scheduled distances on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday – the only real extra is switching my Tuesday run to Monday, the Wednesday run and the back to back days of running which I’ve not really done yet. If I make it through June ok then I think the full might be the one. I’m not sure whether to schedule the Monday and Wednesday runs for first thing in the morning or after work – first thing sounds a lot better but I’d have to make it back in time for work but at 2hrs max for the midweek runs (towards the end) I think this is doable…

What do you think – when did you register for your first Marathon and how many halves had you done beforehand – any advice on squeezing those extra runs in?