2 Week Countdown...

To the Super Bowl? ... yes... 

but the Super Bowl is not what I'm counting down to.

I am counting down to February 5th because that is the day that I plan to complete my first Full Marathon!! Yes, that's right I said it...Full Marathon! That is 26.2 miles of pure determination. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would want to or have the fitness base to sign up for one let alone be excited about running in a Marathon.

Run Surf City

I have been training since October. I took a week off after Long Beach half marathon and then began training for this marathon. So far I have completed 14 weeks of training. These last two weeks are taper weeks. Which means my training is reduced to let my legs recover and rest so that they will be fresh for race day. Yippee!

I went back and forth before training started with how I wanted to run this race. I felt there were two ways I could run it: push my pace and finish as fast as I possibly can or not worry that much about pace and just get comfortable with the distance and enjoy the experience. After a lot of thought I decided to not push my pace and just enjoy this distance for my first time running it.
 
I'm running this race with my good friend Karoline and our goal time is somewhere around 4:30. Last weekend we ran the 20 mile run at a 10:29 pace but the training plan predicts our pace to be 10:00 for the race so I'll be interested to see what pace we end up at.

It's funny how scary 26.2 seemed just a few short months ago. I honestly don't feel intimidated by the mileage anymore and really I'm amazed at how strong our bodies are and how much they thrive at being challenged.

So while everyone countdowns to the Super Bowl I will be counting down to my first full marathon in beautiful Huntington Beach!

And just in case you are interested I ran the half marathon at Surf City last year. Here is the recap.

I used a specific training plan which I will share the details later this week. I absolutely loved using this "new to me" method.