Marathon training Month 2

So, last November I entertained the idea to run a marathon.  I decided I was going to start training on March 1, so that I would have 10 months to get in shape for the Disney marathon the first weekend in January 2013.  I chose this date because my friend wanted to run it with me and I wanted a partner.  She has kids, so wanted to make it a trip to Disneyworld for her family out of it. 

Given that March 1 saw me in Trinidad, I decided to postpone my start till I returned back to New York...March 7.   Immediately my friend backed out on me but I kept up the training.  The way it started was I'd run 1 mile a day 6x a week. then every two weeks I'd increase a mile a day until I was running 3 miles a day 6x a week.  Every two weeks after I would raise 1 mile 3x a week so 3,4,3,4,3,4 then 3,5,3,5,3,5.  I would cap this at 8 miles on the long days and then every Sunday I would increase one mile every two weeks to prepare my body for long mileage on Sundays (day of marathon).  This made it so I would run 23 miles the Sunday before the Disney marathon. 

After my partner dropped out, I decided I'd try for the NYC marathon since I had no reason to travel to Disney anymore.  The NYC marathon is in November, so with my training schedule, I'd run 18 miles the Sunday before marathon day. This coincidentally was perfect since I found out that you shouldn't run over 18 miles a day while training for the marathon since at 18, your body goes on auto pilot for the remaining 8.2 miles.  Not sure how this works, but that's what the experts say. Unfortunately, this failed as well because your acceptance to the marathon isn't guaranteed and I got denied since I don't run sponsored NYCRR races...I train on my own.  With no marathon to run, I got a little discouraged since all the places I know people had their marathons in May where I would not be ready.  Then I found the Hamptons marathon on 9/29/12, which is a Saturday. They seemed to accept my application so it looks like that's the date.  This forced me to change my training schedule to after my 3,8,3,8,3,8 2 weeks, to increase one mile every Saturday now every week rather than every 2 weeks. At this pace, I would get to 18 miles on Saturday 5 weeks before the marathon date, giving me 4 weeks window for failure.  or....I would have run the maximum training allows for 5 straight Saturdays so my confidence would be higher for race day.  So that's where I'm at for training.  Next blog (going to be written immediately following this) will be the actual running part.