It's a Marathon...

...it's a city in Greece, a race, an oil company and it's a term that is synonymous in our culture with anything deemed to be a long term task or difficult operation. Training for a race of any significant distance is a "marathon" in itself. With a tip of the hat to the tortoise and the hair, "slow and steady" will get you to the race (although fast will still win it).

Yesterday was day one in an 18 week training program for a lot us including myself. Remember the excitement of starting today and how good it hopefully felt finishing the first of many runs. While it may be tempting to push hard in the beginning to make rapid fitness gains and really go for your goal, try to keep it slow and steady. Going to quick out of the gate in a race and in training usually sets you up for disaster.

Taking it slow at first will help prevent overuse injuries along with mental burnout. It will also mean you can hold on to that excitement as part of your motivation a little longer, or at least until the first long run.

If you stick to your plan, those fitness gains will undoubtedly come. It's usually an unexpected thing. Somewhere a number of weeks in, when you've started to lose yourself in training, you'll stop at the end of a workout, take a look at your watch and ask: Did I really just run that fast?