The Nonrunner's Marathon Guide for Women

Introduction to My Introduction

When you participate in a marathon, you are given a chip to attach to your shoe. This chip registers the time between you (or at least your shoe) crossing over the start line and the finish line of your race. After I completed my marathon, I left my timing chip attached to my running shoe. The chip would click click click against the top of my foot as I moved through my postmarathon life, a constant reminder of where the shoes, and I, had been.

I wore those shoes and that timer for about two years after my marathon. I ended up parting ways with both in Honduras, of all places.

I had traveled to South America to build houses with a Habitat for Humanity group. The trip was too expensive, I hadn’t convinced anyone I knew to go with me, it didn’t make a lot of sense on a number of levels. But I laced up my running shoes and headed out on another adventure anyways.

Before we started the actual construction of houses, our group leader took us on a team-building adventure to a ginormous local waterfall. This would have been a gorgeous display of nature’s power if our tour guide hadn’t intended on taking all of us into the ginormous waterfall. The outing went from sightseeing to near-death experience as we ventured, arms linked together for support/survival, under the biggest waterfall known to humankind.

The water pounded against our bodies, the spray jumped into our lungs, our heads dipped in and out of the river and waves. It all felt very little like the building of houses, which is what we had come to this country to do.

After we barely escaped the waterfall’s fury, our tour guide led us to a cliff that overlooked the roaring waves at the bottom of the waterfall. He asked if any of us wanted to jump off the cliff. (Shout-out to the complete lack of safety regulations in foreign countries, by the way.)

Most of the drenched group said no thank you to another threat of bodily harm so soon after nearly drowning.

But I jumped.

I am terrified of heights. I don’t like the feeling of falling. The river looked less than friendly. But I jumped anyways.

I was wearing my marathon shoes, the timing chip still attached.

The jump was at the beginning of our weeklong trip. But even after seven days, the shoes never dried out. (It turns out that the H in Honduras stands for “Humidity.”) By the time I was packing up my things to return home, I knew that my marathon shoes were not going to be making the return flight. They were funky, and I didn’t want them to funkify everything else in my suitcase.

So I left them there, outside of the dorms where we stayed, with the timing chip still attached. It felt perfect, in a way, that our journey together ended after I jumped off a friggin’ cliff during a volunteer trip in a foreign country. I’m not sure any of those things would have happened if those shoes and I hadn’t completed a marathon two years prior.

Looking back on my marathon training, I can honestly say that it changed my life in ways that took years for me to truly appreciate. I used to think that my marathon taught me how to tackle a challenge in a very organized way, and it was that skill that served me best over the years.

But now I see that organization is only part of what I learned from marathon training. The other part, the part that has to come first, is the jumping.

The looking out at a crazy goal, a goal that makes no sense, a goal that seems likely to end in failure or at least a pretty loud belly flop, and still jumping anyways. Saying “F it,” and taking that first step into unsure waters, trusting yourself to figure out how to swim.

All huge goals have to start with that initial “F it.” Then comes the organization and the focus and the work. Marathon training is all of those things wrapped up in one crazy package (with quite a few more curse words to be found along the way, by the way).

Truly, 26.2 seems like a completely ridiculous and insurmountable number of miles to run. And it is, if you were to head out and try to run it today, with no training. But instead you back out from that number and start all the way down at 1 mile. Then you move to 3 miles, then 5, then 7, and so on and so forth. And then all of a sudden (and by “all of a sudden” I mean “after weeks and months of grueling training”) you get to a point where 26.2 doesn’t actually seem totally impossible.

Once you’ve successfully tackled a goal as huge as 26.2 miles, you are uniquely prepared to take on just about any challenge or lofty dream that may come your way because you know any destination is possible if you are willing to take the little steps to get there. And if you are willing to take that first big step of daring to jump in at all.

When I wrote this book, my intention was always to provide new runners with a funny guide through marathon training and to offer them a voice that isn’t normally found in books with the words marathon and training on the cover. Judging by the book’s success over the years, it appears I’m not the only one who falls under the heading of “Reluctant Athlete.” Who knew there were so many of us out there cussing under our labored breath as we navigate those running trails?

For those of you just starting out, I hope this book provides you with some laughs between the long runs, reference books, and forced PowerBar consumption you are about to take on. I hope it offers inspiration when the miles are long, the hills are steep, and your knees are wrapped in bags of frozen peas.

Marathon training is a long, treacherous journey lined with blisters on more than just feet, mile markers that seem to stretch farther and farther apart, and finish lines that lead to more beginnings than you could ever imagine.

Let’s jump in, shall we?

Training Schedule

The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women provides you with lots of great advice from someone (that would be me) who has been in the trenches of marathon training and survived (barely) so that she could enlighten (or warn) others heading out to battle. But in addition to my wise advice and general sarcasm, readers may benefit from information provided by people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about and don’t gather most of their running facts while napping on park benches. That’s where the coaches jog in.

Jeff Oberlatz and Michelle Mussuto are the two patient souls who coached me during my marathon. They are encyclopedias of running knowledge, as well as kick-ass runners in their own right. As they coached me, the most un-coachable person on the planet, they offered advice, but didn’t push, and they were just all-around nice people. If I didn’t associate them with knee pain, I’d probably have them over for dinner (and if I knew how to cook).

Following are marathon training schedules for walkers and run/walkers that Jeff and Michelle created. There’s also a half-marathon training schedule if 13.1 miles seems plenty insane to you. Below the schedules you will find Jeff and Michelle’s guidelines for how to decide whether you are a run/walker or a walker. Unfortunately, given my extensive athletic history, which only included throwing a shoe at the TV to change the channel because I lost the remote, I didn’t fall into any category. So I just went with the run/walk method because I hear that variety is the spice of life. It is also the annihilator of muscles, as it turns out.

If you have the chance to train with real coaches, I hope you’ll find some who are as patient and run-happy as Jeff and Michelle. And may I also suggest that you find some as good-looking as they, because during the times when you’re lacking motivation and determination it’s always helpful to have an attractive person to chase after. And you don’t even have to worry about looking like a stalker. See, running can be fun.

^*

^*

A NEW SIX-MONTH SCHEDULE!

Due to popular demand we have included a new schedule. For those who would like to stretch their training out a little bit longer (a.k.a., those who would like to spend their golden years with their original kneecaps), we have included a six-month schedule. Please review “Where Do I Begin?” here before tackling any of these schedules, even this long one. It’s a good idea to ease into such a big athletic undertaking. Heed the coach’s advice about building a foundation of endurance before you set off on your crazy marathon adventure. This will lead to a much happier end to your story than if you just throw on a headband and your iPod and head out hoping to turn yourself into a running machine overnight. That machine will end up in the shop rather quickly.

^*

WHERE DO I BEGIN?

Walkers

Walk/Runners

Examples of walk/run:

Start with 3–4 minutes of walking followed by 1–2 minutes of running.

Gradually progress to 1 minute of walking followed by 3–4 minutes of running.

Runners

PICK THE EVENT THAT BEST FITS YOUR FITNESS LEVEL

Every marathon has a different cutoff time when the course closes and you’ll be sharing the road with automobiles. The good news is that in that scenario someone may offer you a ride. But if you’re looking to actually cross the finish line on foot, make sure you pick an event that still has the finish line marked by the time you get to the end.

WHAT TRAINING IS REALLY ALL ABOUT

Consistency and low, incremental progress. Remember: The program is months long to allow for adequate time to go from zero to 26.2, or 13.1!

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR FORM

Whether you run, run/walk, or walk, form is vital to staying healthy and helping to avoid injury.

Now, enough with all this educated and professional advice, let’s move on to the rest of the book!