101 Pounds, 1 Year, 1 Race

I love a good challenge.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm always challenging myself (or others). So when it comes to weight loss, I can't just be satisfied with losing weight and getting fit. No, I need to up the stakes. How am I gonna do that?

That's right. A marathon. I have it all planned out, literally.

I invite any and all of my readers to participate in my marathon pre-training and marathon training! I spent a good several hours researching the best ways to prepare and this is what I've come up with:

1. Pre-train first. You have to be running (or be able to run) a good 20-30 miles per week before you start legitimately training for a full marathon. So I've developed a plan that starts with prepping me for a 5k, then a couple 10k's, and finally a half marathon. There ends my pre-training.
2. Training. My official full marathon training starts in February. It's about 15 weeks long, which is on the short end of marathon training schedules. From what I've seen, they can be as long as 26 weeks. It's pretty adjustable. The basic idea is that you increase the total number of miles per week and taper off the last week or two before the big race so that you aren't too exhausted.
3. Cross training. Through the pre-training and training schedules, you should do 1-2 days a week of cross training exercises, which means swimming or biking or something like that. 
4. Nutrition. Once you've built up running endurance and are running several miles per week, you should begin consuming a runner's diet. Basically, eat lots of carbs. The ratio that was suggested is 60% of the calories coming from carbs, 25% from protein, and 15% from fat, give or take 5% for each of those. For now, I'm sticking to me regular diet, which is about 40% carbs, 30% protein, and 30% fat. As I run more, I will slowly change towards a runner's diet.

That's the gist of my plan. Wish me luck everyone, and once again I invite all of you to try this with me!! If I can do this, everyone can!

xoxo