Hi there! I thought it would be fun to feature someone that is tackling the marathon distance for the first time. You’ll see a monthly post from her as she trains over the summer and throughout the fall. And, the bonus is that she is my sister!

Enjoy!

-Sarah

Hi I'm Becca, and I'm a runner. I've been running a few years now and have really come to love it. I've done a few 5ks, a few 10ks, half a dozen half marathons and even a 25k. My sister is definitely to blame for me starting running, and I'm so glad she got me in to it. I've found it really helps bring me peace and keep my mind in check. I'm a proud back of the back interval runner and love bringing the party to the back so make sure to say HI if you see me out there!!

So it's official, I made the decision for the big plunge, the FULL plunge...I'm doing my first full marathon this fall!! This is a decision I've pondered for a while now, and after quite a bit of back and forth and getting other peoples' opinions, I'm going for it. And bless my husband's heart, when I told him he completely supported the idea no question. When I first thought about doing a full marathon my thoughts were to wait until I hit 40, give myself more time to get in better shape, or if I'm really honest....get faster at running. But I did some deep digging, listened to a lot of the 300 Pounds and Running podcast with Martinus and Latoya and decided I was only robbing myself if I waited. I shouldn't let my pace be the biggest reason I don't think I can do a marathon. Who knows, I could wait forever until I hit a pace I'm "happy" with. You just never know what life will throw your way or how long you have left until for whatever reason, you won't get the opportunity to try the things you want to try. So with that in mind, I decided to go for it, screw waiting until a milestone birthday, or a "better" pace (let's be real there is no such thing, we all ALWAYS want a better pace) I'm going to run a marathon no matter how long it takes me.

So now that the big decision to do a marathon was made, here comes the next big decision, WHICH marathon to do?! I don't know if everyone else puts this much thought in to what marathon to do for their first but I have a lot of things to consider, and I'm just nerdy enough to make a spreadsheet of my top five possible marathons and their details in order to make my choice. The factors I considered where things like location, fees, date of race and the time limits. The most important factor for me, is the time limits. I'm a back of the pack runner and a run/walker, and it is very possible that I will not make the usual 6:30:00 cutoff times. Three of my top choices had those. The more I thought on it the more I knew I didn't want stressing about beating a time limit to be what I worry about most in my first marathon. That left me with two final options; one with a 7-hour time limit, and one with no time limit. After a little more discussion with my sister about logistics for race weekend as a final selling point, I decided to go with the race with no time limit. So Grand Rapids Marathon here I come!!

Now there was only one other big decision left, deciding on a training plan! This one is tough for everyone. Every runner is so different and in such a different place. You have to consider where YOU are with what the training plans are telling you to do. A quick Google search of beginner marathon training plans gives you quite a wide range of plans for an even wider range of beginner abilities. As I've mentioned before, I'm a back of the pack interval runner, so this was a big factor in what training plan options I looked at. After looking at a minimum of 3 different plans I finally ended up with one I found on a website that even had plans for Walk/Runners and Walkers. So this plan has you running 4:1 intervals (running 4 minutes, walking for 1) and eventually 5:1 and doing the marathon at 5:1. I can now tell you after a few weeks that as someone who has been doing 1:1 intervals for a long time, the jump to 4:1 was seriously tough and honestly disheartening. I let it get to me and it really affected the first couple weeks of my training. The more I thought about it and discussed it a bit with my sister when she came out for my long run this past weekend, I decided to just change the intervals. (Seriously she rode her adorable Schwinn bike while I ran and I haven't had that much fun on a long run in a long time!) It's my training schedule after all! And as my sister wisely noted, increasing both run time and distance is not generally a great idea. So that's where I am now, 4 weeks in doing 1:1 now and not feeling like my runs are completely impossible or a failure. I look forward to keeping you updated with the process over the next 16ish weeks!