When I hauled myself out of bed at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning – following a long night at the pub watching the Flames game with friends (maybe not the best idea?) – I didn’t have high expectations for the hour-long team run that was to follow.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was about to do the longest run I had ever done.

I approached the run like I have most of the program, trying to do my best and learn as much as I can from the experience.

It wasn’t until we finished the full 60-minutes that I checked in with the running app on my phone and noticed that we had run almost 9 kilometres. It took a minute to hit me but when it did, I realized that was the furthest I have ever run at one time.

While I know almost every Saturday run from now on will be the “longest run ever” for me, this was the first time I surpassed what I have ever done in my life until now. And every runner or athlete knows how awesome it feels to beat a personal best, especially when you weren’t expecting to.

To explain what kind of accomplishment this was we have to back up a bit. Actually we are backing up a lot, to the day I decided to join the Marathon Training Program.

Day 1

By the time I had officially committed to joining the program and set about creating this blog, I had a little over a month until it started on March 5. At that point I was two months into a new job and couldn’t actually remember the last time I hit the gym. We had, however, just signed up for Netflix over Christmas so you can imagine what I did spend a lot of time doing. I will give you a hint… it wasn’t running.

Regardless of my couch potato ways, I had made up my mind and knew all I could do was start from where I was… which was at zero. Since it is recommended participants be able to run for 30 minutes, three times a week by the start of the program, I made that my goal. I knew it would be a stretch but it was a start!

I got a 0-5km training plan from the Leah and Ashley, two of the program coordinators, and I began to run. It hurt. I started with 20 or 30 minutes at a time. Most of it was a combination of running and walking. Many times there was a lot more walking than running. I cross-trained by doing yoga and swimming and I starting to watch what I ate, and slowly I began to improve.

However, time was not on my side and going from working out zero times a week to trying to work out three or four times a week is HARD. By the beginning of March I was stressing a lot over not being where I thought I should be. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up during the group runs and that I would hurt myself running too far or too fast. I worried that my runs were too short and that I wouldn’t finish designing the blog before the program started (I didn’t, which is why you are reading this now, sorry).

But on March 3, two days before the program started I ran for 30 minutes for the first time with only a two minute walking break in the middle. It was no “30 minutes three times a week” but it was leaps ahead of where I was a month before. And now I am leaps and bounds ahead of where I was then. So it all worked out and I guess I will just have to blog my way back to the beginning.

If you are thinking of running a marathon next year and decide to do so more than a month before joining a program like I did, give yourself time to check out the two options the UofC Marathon Training Program has to help people prepare for the program. These plans will surely take some of the stress off of tackling this kind of challenge.

Find more info about their self-led Getting Started Package and their 8-week preparation program.

Training Takeaway #1
– It’s OK to start small. Don’t beat yourself up if you aren’t exactly where you think you should be. The training journey for any endurance event is always more of a marathon than a sprint (in this case literally) so believe in yourself!