I’ll be running my first marathon in July in San Francisco! I have been building up my base since Oct and I officially started my 20-week marathon training plan this week!

Why, you ask, did I choose The San Francisco Marathon as my first marathon? Well, I’ve been reading and learning a lot about running my first marathon and most sources will say: choose your first marathon in or near your home town so you don’t have to deal with travel or jetlag or unfamiliar environments. Choose a marathon that is relatively flat. Choose a marathon in the spring or fall so the weather will not be so hot (or cold). Have about a year of training under your belt before running a marathon. So… I’m not doing any of those things!

I chose to do The San Francisco Marathon because…well, it kind of chose me. My family was planning a vacation to San Fran at the end of July. We started booking flights and rental cars and accommodations. One day, I thought, I wonder when the San Fran Marathon is? So I googled it and lo and behold, it’s the same week that we are there. What are the chances??? So even though my original plan was to do my first marathon in Oct (after 1 year of running with my running club), in my hometown, on a flat-as-a-pancake run, I signed up for TSFM instead! 😄 Here’s how I’m thinking about it: it’s a hilly course which is great because it gives purpose to my hill trainings, it starts at 5:30am which is 8:30am EST which is when I normally do my long runs, I will be staying at a hotel close to the start line so it’ll be just like another training run where I just start running from home, only with 30,000 people! Always look on the bright side!!

Anyway, back to my training log. My plan has me running 4x/week. I did 8km on Monday, 7.5km hills repeat on Wednesday, and 12km recovery today. Saturday will be a 15km long run.

My running club, the North York RunNinjas, runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays and I’m glad to have some of them join me on Mondays and Thursdays. Since I have no self-discipline to run on my own, they are the main reason why I feel so confident that I’ll be able to successfully train for this marathon. Thanks RunNinjas!

Nutrition log:

• Pre-run: banana 45 min before
• Mid-run: Just water
• Post-run: Milo with milk 🥛 and Vietnamese noodles for dinner