One week of Marine Corps Marathon training down, 15 to go.

Here’s a snapshot of what I see in my Runner’s World Challenge training log. All of the workouts from my plan are pre-loaded into there, and I can then export them to my g-cal.

I can also just drag and drop a workout to change up y schedule a bit. For example, the plan has long runs on Sunday, but I usually run my long runs on Saturday so I can have the rest of the weekend free to have fun and have them over with. So, I just swapped Saturday and Sunday’s runs.

Here’s a zoomed-in example of what I see (complete with my logged miles and notes.) Also, by “easy enough to run hills,” I mean somewhere relatively easy for me to get to. Since I’ve basically resigned myself to becoming a morning runner since I’m either working late or doing something else at night, I still want to get as much sleep as possible and run, so I don’t really want to take the subway to Central Park or somewhere else hilly to run.

This morning, I had big plans to go to the beach with Emily, but I woke up, looked outside and at weather.com and realized that today was not going to be a good beach day. It was overcast and humid, and thunderstorms were in the forecast. No thanks. Since I was up, I did some work, but then started feeling EXHAUSTED, like I’d taken Benadryl.

I would like to introduce you to the culprit. I started taking these supplements a few years ago when working out with a trainer. He told me that the magnesium was good for athletes (and according to a study cited in the article, female runners have intakes as low as 59% of the recommended daily allowance) because it aided in muscle recovery. My muscles were feeling pretty achy last night, so I decided to take one of these babies. Whoa. I don’t remember this happening when I first started taking it, but I felt like I got hit by a truck this morning. I did some work and general screwing around on the Internets from about 7-10 and then had to go back to sleep, I felt so lethargic. Has this ever happened to any of you?

While the magnesium-induced lethargy was not so ideal, it did force me to just slow down for a few hours today. No catching up on work, Junior League work, blogging, working out, doing laundry, screwing around on the Internet. Just dog-snuggling and TV-watching.

Yes, of course my dog has a banana toy.

Eventually, I decided I needed to get in today’s run, a 4-mile easy run. My plan calls for 5 days, and on two of the days, it says I can substitute cross-training, but I’m trying to see if I can get adjusted to running 5 days a week. I’ll try it for a few weeks, and if anything starts hurting or it feels like too much, I’ll drop down to 4. I was really sore and tight, so I decided I needed some yoga, too.

I went to Yoga Vida (previous Yoga Vida review) for their flow class. Alec Baldwin’s wife is an instructor there, but was not my instructor, so there were no Jack Donaghy sightings.

I was looking for something that wouldn’t kick my ass, but wasn’t just lay-on-the-ground-and-do-a-few-stretches, and this class was perfect. It was a flow, but it never moved too quickly for my sore muscles. I ran one mile there, took the 65-minute class, and then ran 3 miles home to finish out my 4 miles for the day.

Today’s miles: 4 / Week miles: 27! Even though a few of the runs this week were less than awesome, I’m still happy with my first week of training.

Those of you who’ve just started training for something: how’s your training going?

Fellow runners, what kind of supplements, if any do you take?

Edited to add: Runner’s World gave me a comp entry into their RW Challenge program to blog about it. All opinions are my own.

Tuesday is a big day.

Not just because the numbers are three odd numbers in a row, although I guess that’s kinda cool, too.

^Ignore that. I apparently have no idea what date or year it is.

No, on Tuesday, I start training for my third marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon.

It’s in D.C., where I formed all my bad habits, so I’m excited for another race there to show the city I’m doing better without it. Last year, I surprised my friend Lindsay and went to spectate Marine Corps, and now she’s back on the East Coast (yay, minus not having a friend to visit in Hawaii) and living outside of D.C. and will be able to spectate me running the race!

I’m also excited…

…because I’m participating in the Runner’s World Challenge! Back in May, Tina, Anne and I had an awesome meeting with the communications director for Runner’s World, and I mentioned I was running Marine Corps. He asked if I’d want to try out the challenge in exchange for blogging about it.

I don’t know if I’ve ever said yes so quickly! Runner’s World wanted to work with me, who could barely run a mile just a little over three years ago? Well, okay. I was seriously flattered and excited.

It includes:

• a training plan (I chose the break 4:00 one, gulp)
• access to their training log software, which I’m just starting to play with now, but lets you upload your Garmin info to and access from your iPhone. The access from iPhone part is cool, since in years past, I uploaded my entire schedule into my Google Calendar, so I like the access-from-smartphone part. There’s also areas to input stuff like weight and nutrition, and I’m going to try to keep up with those but know the nutrition-logging will be hard to keep up with.
• motivational emails from Bart Yasso (although we’re already buddies)
• a t-shirt and book
• access to private forums

And then some awesome race-weekend stuff:

• strategy session and shakeout run with Bart Yasso
• pre/post-race private tent access (after Disney Princess, I can say this is super-clutch)

One of my New Balance contacts tried and loved the program for Big Sur, so I’m really really excited to try out all these tools and have access to their editors through this program for the next few months.

Let’s talk marathon: are you doing one this fall? If so, which one? Do you have an aggressive time goal, too?

NYC runners: Last year, I started a Facebook group for those training for the NYC Marathon. It became an awesome way to connect with other runners who were also marathon training and learn about cool area races going on that fit in well with NYCM training plans. Since I don’t want to leave my own group…let’s say that it’s for NYC runners training for marathons, okay? You can click on the link above to request membership. (I keep it private so the whole Internet doesn’t know where you’re going running if you don’t want them to.)

If you’re not training for a marathon, any big fitness goals you’re working on?