Not my first marathon attempt

In 2001, I had planned to run the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati and began my training in February, about 10 weeks from the marathon date. At that point in my life, I had never run further than 6 miles and on any kind of regular basis in almost 3 years. With that said, my training was not going too bad. I was not running fast, but I was getting some miles in. I signed up and paid (my parents actually footed the bill) and I was ready to go, or getting ready. With about 3 weeks until race day, I went on a long run with one of my professors in college. It was hot, probably in the low 80's and we ran just over 10 miles. My long runs weren't exactly long. I became grossly dehydrated and became sick. Due to being ill, I missed several days of running. This, added to my already poor fitness level scared me out of the race. Looking back now, I don't understand why I didn't just go for it. Who cares if it took me 5 hours but I was too scared.

I must admit that I share some of the same fears today. However, this time I feel I am much more prepared. I run more in a week now than I did in a month back then and I have been logging consistent miles for awhile now. However, I have placed some expectations on myself that I am not sure I can reach. 26.2 miles of exertion is really going to hurt. What if I went out too fast and had to slow down...or even worse if it got too hard and I had to walk!?

Enough about my fears, lets get down to business...I purchased a 2 month membership at a local gym (I will explain later). My 2 months expire on March 1st. This gives me 6 Mondays left, counting today. So I decided that I would do the same workout each Monday and see how I progress. The details of the workout are as follows (2 mile warm up, cool down until comfortable and then run at 9 MPH or a 6:40 mile pace for as long as possible). Today I only made it 12 minutes. I have been focusing much more on distance than speed and with 14 weeks to go it is time to round out my training with some specific speed work.