Just after Christmas I signed up for the Raleigh Rock n Roll marathon, to be held on April 12, 2015. I’d been wanting to commit to one for a while and had struggled between committing to traveling to one (like the Detroit Free Press marathon, which looks really fun) versus, well, not over-complicating things with travel and logistics and cost. I read that the Rock n Roll marathons are a pretty fun first marathon, and Raleigh is local, so that decided it.

I started off thinking I’d follow the 16-week training plan suggested in the Rock n Roll Marathon Guide; I already have a base of running 10-15 mile long runs at least once a week. But I have a hard time getting excited to do the shorter, speedwork type of training runs included in the plan. So I decided to sign up for a coaching program in person instead through Fleet Feet Sports.

The training group met for the first time on Wednesday of this week. We went over logistics of when and where we’ll meet, how the program will work, and met the coaches and mentors. Next we went for an easy 2-mile run — in the dark! My knuckle lights worked well.

In the next session on Saturday we’ll run a mile-long pace trial to determine what pace we’ll train at over the course of the program, and to set a goal pace for completing the race. I haven’t done a timed mile in a while, very curious to see how that goes. My guess is somewhere between 9 and 10 minutes.