You can easily get caught up on focusing on that daunting number of 26.2 miles. It seems so far. But the real challenge is not the distance you are running; it is for how long of a period of time. Your body goes through a lot of changes when you are doing a physical activity for several hours.
December has been a month of building up to a larger volume of training. The past few months consisted of mileage in the high 20-30 range and about 3-4 hours per week. I am now running over 50 miles and over 6 hours per week, and I can definitely feel it. The majority of my runs last over an hour. They will continue to increase as the BIG DAY gets closer.
On the longer runs, I can tell I have a lot of work to do to get in marathon shape. I ran a mile at the end of a long run at goal marathon pace (around 6:40 min/mile) and it was an eye opener. Keeping that pace for three hours seems impossible.
I’ll get there.
