Where’s the peanut butter?!

I’ve decided I’m going to run a marathon this year - here’s how I’m doing my planning. I hope this is useful to others who might be thinking of running a marathon and a bunch of it is (I think) generalizable to other kinds of life organization using a couple handy websites.

• Training - Hal Higdon has a website that breaks down a training schedule to help you figure a plan to prepare and build endurance for the race. I contacted a few friends about this and got advice from my friend Katie, who I consider an eminently reputable source and she mentioned she’d used Hal’s program for her first marathon, so that sounds like a good place to start to me!
• Race selection - I initially just thought “I’ll do the Seattle marathon” but have been advised by my sister and a coworker that this might not be the best choice, so now I’m reconsidering and probably aiming for Victoria or Portland. But I’m keeping track of various runs and marathons in del.icio.us, which is a great online bookmarking system and makes it very easy for me to find, remember, and catalog links about different runs
• Scheduling - is made a little easier with Google Calendar. I created a custom calendar called “Organized runs” and have put the various upcoming Seattle area runs that I know of in there. It’s really easy for me to toggle the display of these runs on or off from my main calendar and also remember what’s coming up. This is pretty easy to share with someone else who might be willing to run with me, too.
• Training routes - lastly, I need a bunch of runs in various mile increments to hit the training goals set up by Hal’s program. There are running groups that leave from Green Lake near my house every weekend and I probably ought to get hooked up with them because they’ll have maps that get me to my exact target mileage. I’m pretty sure this would get me the motivation I need, too, and I’ll probably start going there. Meanwhile, I’m using the Google maps pedometer to find routes from my house and bookmarking these routes in delicious with the tags “run” and “route”. This way I (will eventually) have a convenient set of different runs at different distances to try and to keep hitting my goals.

So that’s how I roll. If you live in Seattle and would like to go for a run, I’ll be starting the Hal program this week (5/21) and don’t really have a set schedule yet (mornings vs. evenings) - just the mileage. But if you want to go, you should contact me!