Finish a marathon, running the whole way

Redemption run! Second try after I flamed out and had to run/walk my first marathon in 3hr45min 😭

9 weeks of training completed 9 weeks of training to go What has helped so far: - foam rolling my calves - stretching - body glide - ran all the miles on my plan To do going forward: - find time to just keep running

Longest run in 15 years. Fast long run yet. Ran out of glycogen stores with 3.5 miles to go which was not fun. Still finished strong and fast but boooo wall. Only one 20 mile long run to go before marathon time and it is time to sloooow it down.

Ran the whole way!! It was so hot and humid. I went out so fast, almost two minutes faster than my training runs which made me pretty nervous. But I just kept running by feel. And as mile after mile of 8:20s rolled by I was feeling good! When I hit mile 16, I felt so strong and that’s when I knew that no matter what I would meet my goal. My headphones died, no problem. Entered the zone. Barreled ahead. There’s a killer hill at mile 22. Head down, one foot in front of the other. One mile later I was at the top and it was literally all downhill from there. GG EZ. In the end, not only did I run the whole thing but I crushed my previous marathon time from 15 years ago. That race I was aiming for a 3:15 but crashed and burned and had to walk the last six miles so finished in 3:44. Things I learned this time around: - for the love of god train slow, most of my long runs were 10+min per mile - don’t pick up new sports (climbing / tennis) in the last weeks of training if you don’t want to get injured - when you do get injured it’s okay to skip 1.5 weeks of running including your only 20mi training run just let your body rest / heal - have fuuuuuuun!