Marathon Week 1

My first week of marathon training is done, just 17 weeks to go. I sort of have mixed feelings about this first week of training. On the one hand I have been able to finish every run without any serious injury-related pain. On the other hand all of my runs have felt slow and difficult. This definitely isn't where I thought I would be during my first week of marathon training.

Today's run was particularly worrisome. Less than a half mile into the run I started feeling some mild pain in my foot. I stopped to adjust my shoe and decided that if the pain was still there after a half mile, I need to cut this run short. At a half mile the pain was still there. I turned around while Mr. Shoe continued his run. I fought back tears of frustration while I ran back towards the car. But I am so glad that I kept running because the pain was completely gone before I reached the car. Must have just been weird phantom pain. I was able to get in the rest of my 4 mile run without any more pain. 

Monday: 2.56 mile run [very slow, lots of walking breaks, my legs were killing me]
Tuesday: rest
Wednesday: 3.1 mile run [just two walking breaks, legs were sore, but not awful]
Thursday: rest
Friday: 3.5 mile run [ran the whole time]
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 4.08 mile run [phantom pain in the first mile, felt a bit less difficult than the earlier runs this week]

Total miles: 13.24

It is so frustrating to see that number be so low. I was expecting my first week of marathon training to have 26 miles. My Sunday run was supposed to be 10 miles, not 4! I can't even call 4 miles a long run! I know if I would have tried to jump right back into training I would likely end up injured. So I know taking it slow is the smart way to proceed. I just hope my 3 weeks off won't set me up for a miserable marathon.

Mr. Shoe basically had the same week of training that I did. Except he didn't take any walk breaks and all of his runs were much faster than mine. This was his first week of training for his first half marathon.