Mountains 2 Beach Marathon Training 2020

Xander wants to run a marathon this year so we started looking at choices! Due to his schedule with cross country, music and school there is really only one good time of year to fit a marathon in - late spring. Our criteria for the race required that it be within driving distance, and have a half marathon distance choice. We selected Memorial Day weekend. We promptly selected the Buffalo Marathon as our first choice and were mostly through the registration process before realizing you have to be 18 to run. Strike out. We then fell in love with the idea of the Ottawa marathon only to find out that you also have to be 18. The Vermont City marathon was a good fit for Xander. You only need to be 16 for this one and Xander just turned 16, but there is no half marathon option for Elizabeth.

So we changed our plan! Completely. We opened up our search to the United States in general with a focus on easy flights. We have enough points to use points to fly to a destination race. We thought the Rock and Roll series could be fun, but there was nothing available that weekend. However, we found a fun sounding point to point race in California. The Mountains 2 Beach Marathon has a half marathon choice and a marathon choice. As the name suggests, it starts in the mountains and ends up at the beach. The half starts halfway through the marathon course just like the Wineglass Marathon in Corning. The best news? You only have to be 14 to run the marathon. We're in!!

Time to train

It has been awhile since I ran a marathon. My last 50K was in 2017 with the Green Lakes 50K and my last marathon was the New York City marathon with Jenny in 2016. I've been doing plenty of half marathons, but this is a more serious level of training. I'm going to have to get comfortable with longer distances again and earlier morning running. I also have to support Xander in his training.

Our training plans

One fun thing about this is that it means an opportunity to create a training plan again. I love writing training plans! Now the job is to follow mine. I created a plan for Xander using mostly Hal Higdon's Novice 2 Training Program. The first 3 weeks are just getting consistent base running. We've all been running, but on some icky weather days we opt to bike or elliptical inside. These 3 weeks are about making sure we get started with running in most weather again.

Xander's training plan

My training plan

My training plan is a mix of the Hanson's method between the just finished and beginner options (removing Monday runs, dropping some mileage and removing one of the days of speed) and Hal Higdon. I still have a 20 mile run in the mix, but am trying to follow the back to back longer runs on weekends. I fit in 2 times weekly strength sessions, some biking, 2x weekly yoga and I scattered in rest days.

Weekly progress

I plan to write short posts each week about our training progress to keep everyone honest! This will be mostly about my journey with some of Xander's and Scott's training thrown in. Elizabeth is in her spring semester of her freshman year of college. She does want to run a marathon someday, but doesn't feel that now is the best time to train. She's excited to join us for the half!!