Marathon Training - Halfway Done!

I'm back from vacation! I'll be sure to share all of the excitement with you as soon as I organize all my pictures! But for now, I'm fully emersed in my marathon training...and I'm halfway done! It's hard to believe that it is getting so close, but with each week I am feeling more and more prepared to conquer the beast that is the NYC Marathon! As a result of my busy travel schedule, I've been doing training runs all over the country world :) Here are some pictures from the first half of my training runs...

The very first run of my training happened to be when I was in Kentucky to meet my new nephew, Landon. It was fun to have some company on this short three mile run. Especially such cute company! I love my little niece, Brinley!

I managed another short training run in the heat of an NYC day. Not just any day though...my 30th birthday!

In early August, we traveled to Pittsburgh to visit friends. I was scheduled to run 10 miles, but timing allowed for a great eight miles around a beautiful lake at North Park instead.

I've completed several runs in Albany over the course of training, but this particular day I had the company of a couple of friends for 10 long miles at the Corning Perserve. It might have been 9.5, but we started a little late and it was getting really warm. It felt pretty good though. We kept a steady pace the whole time.

As our trip to Europe approached, I became a little concerned about how I'd fit all the runs in while we were gone. Fortunately, I had been able to stick pretty strickly to the schedule up until we left so I didn't want to get too far away from it, but I also didn't want to stress out about getting every run in while we were away. Enter the park at Burton on Trent literally three minutes from Chris' cousin's house.

I did several runs at this park. It was essentially a roughly one mile loop around the lake so it got a little mundane, but it worked! Prior to the trip, my longest training run had been 12 miles. During the course of the trip, I was scheduled for a 14 mile run which I ended up having to cut in half, but I did make all of the other scheduled runs that first week. The second week was a little different as we were traveling more, but we did a few walking tours and my first run after returning to the States felt good so I'm guessing I didn't get myself too off track while I was away!

The weekend after we returned from our trip, I headed off to a bachlorette party at the finger lakes. (I'll be recapping that fun soon as well!) I was able to sneak in a short run there. Just moments after I took this picture two deer ran right in front of me on the path. Scared me to death!

The next day, I was scheduled for 16 miles, but since I wanted to watch at least some of the Bengals game (so disappointing) AND didn't want to miss my train back to the city I was only able to manage a 10 miler in Albany. It was good to ease my way back into the higher mileage though.

Overall, I think the first half of the training has gone well especially considering a fourth of it was spent in Europe! I'm going to attempt the 16 miler this weekend to get me back on track...and I feel pretty positive about it. One change I am making to the second half of the training is adding in a boot camp class one day a week. My work is offering them for free on Mondays for the next month so I gave it a shot and my Tuesday run seemed fine afterward. I mean, I was am still a little sore, but I think the extra strength building exercises are helpful. Now, if I can only make it through the second half of the training I'll be in business!!

Andrea :)