My Marathon Blog

Feeling enthusiastic about my new year’s resolution to get fit I decided before Christmas, along with several of my colleagues, adoptive parents and adoptive teenagers from Scottish Adoption to sign up to the Edinburgh Marathon. I also managed to persuade several of my friends and family members to sign up to the marathon to raise funds for Scottish Adoption.  They all agreed that it was a worthwhile charity to run for, or in other words put themselves through months of torture for!  We could choose to run in the Full Marathon, Half Marathon or the Relay Race and as this is my first race I chose to run the Half Marathon.

I agreed that I would start my marathon training after the New Year.  However, in the meantime I began to look at training plans and guides and began to feel anxious about the amount of training I would have to do!!  All the plans I kept looking at assumed that you already had a level of running ability which I don’t!!  I also bought some new running shoes which involved a horrific visit to a running shop where they made me run on a treadmill twelve times before they found me the perfect trainers!  I was exhausted after that.

Week 1 (7-12 Jan)

After an unhealthy Christmas and New Year I started my marathon training on the 7^th January.  I managed to run for 2.7 miles with the occasional walk.  I was quite pleased that I had not collapsed after the first five minutes.  Feeling quite good about my run on my return to the office a colleague had also been out for his first pre-marathon run and had managed 7 miles!! Now I was starting to worry.  By Wednesday of this week I had developed a really sore back and could hardly walk down the spiral staircase in Scottish adoption.  I was really disappointed to have to delay my training after getting in the frame of mind to run.  By Saturday it had begun to loosen off and I managed to run an impressive 3.5 miles! (Impressive by my standards).

Another colleague who is taking part in the relay race with his children went out for his first training run this week and ended up damaging his knee after running 3 miles, he recovered in a few days.  He has now decided to delay his marathon training until nearer the time.

Week 2 (14-19 Jan)

My back and legs have recovered from week one and I am determined this week to increase the distance I run although it will be at a very slow pace.  After a discussion with my hairdresser who recommended I downloaded an app which allows you to listen to your music and be chased by Zombies I set off on my first run of the week and managed again to run 3.5 miles at a slightly faster pace to avoid being caught by the Zombies!! 

I have decided for my training to run on a Monday and Friday and complete a long run on a Saturday or Sunday and attend my Krav Maga class on a Wednesday.   By Friday I decided to change where I was running as running around my town was proving difficult as I live on a hill and at this stage in my training I am not up to running up hills.  After changing to a flat route I managed to run 7.6 miles and outrun 5 zombies! I managed to repeat this run again on Sunday.  I am just hoping that the snow stays away next week so that I can continue with my training. 

My Colleague who is running the relay race is beginning to get concerned as his children have been attending the gym on a regular basis to build up their fitness for the marathon and they are giving him a hard time as he is going to bring their time down on the day.  He is now feeling the pressure to not let his children down.

This week I have also managed to persuade another two friends to run the half marathon in aid of Scottish adoption.  Scottish adoption is raising money for various funds and projects within our children’s work.  Please click here if you would like to donate to Scottish Adoption and support all the runners who are taking part.