u/sharkshark5555

Hi all, I’m about 6 weeks in to a base building routine. My ultimate goal is obviously to run a full marathon and I plan to start Higdon Novice 1 training plan when 18 weeks out from a race after working up to a solid base.

My weekly mileage has been slowly climbing to now about 20mpw and I’ve been able to get full recovery between runs and am regularly stretching, no niggling issues so far and generally feeling pretty good on the runs.

However weekly mileage is sort of the only thing I’ve seen improvement on so far. I still have the same issue as when I started 6 weeks ago (and obviously a common one for beginners) — my heart rate quickly climbs to 160bpm which according to my watch is just between Zone 3/Zone 4 at my usual pace of 10:00/mile. It doesn’t feel that hard to maintain that pace for 7+ miles and I can sustain conversation. But even slowing down to 11:00-11:30 doesn’t bring the HR down much, and I don’t feel I can go much slower than that without just walking, which I do occasionally, but then it jumps right back up again. 10:00 pace feels really comfy and maintainable but anything faster than that is a real struggle even for short stretches.

Can I trust that my heart rate & pacing might eventually start to improve a bit if I just keep with it? The only thing I’ve really been able to see improvement on so far is just my total weekly mileage and long run distances that I’m capable of. I’m not sure if I should do more intentional tempo work or really, really slow WAY down to force myself in to that mythical Zone 2 range.

Is this crazy? The wedding is halfway across the country, so it’d be a fly-in-fly-out type of situation. We’d probably go for the ceremony, stay for 20 minutes of cocktail hour, then catch a cab straight to the airport to go home. Likely arrive home very late evening and I’d run the marathon the next morning.

Anyone ever done significant, potentially hectic travel the day before a marathon (particularly your first one?) What should I consider regarding fueling, rest, etc?

These are dear friends who came to me & my wife’s wedding just last year and they are still in the city we moved away from 2 years ago, so I really want to make it work. But, I’m already registered for the race and have had that date circled on the calendar.

Edit: For what it’s worth, this is the TC marathon which is my “home town race” and has sort of been my dream and motivation to run since starting training. It does seem like I could “downgrade” to a smaller podunk race in a nearby town 2 weeks later and maybe run TC next year instead… some comments are convincing me that maybe that’s the way to go.

Anyone know when the TC full marathon usually hits its registration cap? Or if there is a way to check how close they are to filling up?

I’m new-ish to running although am starting from pretty solid baseline fitness. I started running seriously with a 24 week training plan last month to target doing the TC full marathon in October. I’m not quite confident enough yet that I’ll be up-to-snuff with my training to pull the trigger on registering quite yet, maybe after another month or two and my long runs get longer & longer. But I don’t want to miss out if it sells out before then.