Big Plans

Before we know it, the -ber months are here already! Time does fly by sooooo fast. It seems like just yesterday, I was in high school; now I have a teen-age daughter in high school!

Speaking of the -ber months, December is not that far away. I hear that there are displays of Christmas decors in some malls already. But for me, what's really special about December is that I'm fervently hoping to run my first full marathon on the fifth of the month. I should have been in training since August, but I was fasting then, so I'm just starting my *serious* runs this week. (Yes, I quit fasting even before Eid el-Fitr, because hindi ko na kaya! I had a vomiting and trembling fit last week, and felt really weak and bad, so I thought it's time to stop starving myself. God will understand.) So now I have just about 12 weeks to prepare for the full 42-km run. Tsk-tsk. Looks like I'm cramming again, just like in college.

I'm following this training program called the Marathon Coach, made by the Running Method. It's convenient for me because I have it on my iPhone as an app, and my iPhone goes with me whenever and wherever I run. The program's different from other training plans I've looked at. For one thing, its runs are in time measurements (50 minutes, 2 hours, etc.) rather than in kilometer distances. For another, for a twelve-week program, it appears much less rigorous than others.

That observation had me worried yesterday, as I was looking at other training programs. I've seen two that recommend a 21- or 23-km run on the first week of training. This is so because there are only 12 weeks instead of the customary minimum 16 weeks of training, and so it's supposed to be fast-tracked and a little intense. Meanwhile, in the Marathon Coach plan, only 50-minute runs are recommended for the first week. What a big difference.

I gave it some thought, and I decided I'd shoot for a 20-km-ish run this weekend. Thinking about this long run scares me a bit, but it's a run I'm looking forward to nonetheless :-) If I do make it, I'll try to adopt the other, more demanding training programs. But if I can't manage it, I'll stick with the Marathon Coach plan.

I'm glad I'm running again. Yesterday, I had a great night's sleep, the best I've had in weeks. I attribute it to my tiring pace run earlier in the day. It was very pleasantly exhausting, and I slept like a baby because of it.

Some screenshots of the Marathon Coach iPhone app: