When should you start training?

THE DAY YOU WERE BORN IS THE DAY YOU STARTED TRAINING.

YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING YOUR WHOLE LIFE FOR THIS MOMENT.

WHEN SHOULD YOU START TRAINING?!?! WHEN AREN'T YOU TRAINING?!?!


Ok. Drill sergeant mode out of my system, let's talk in quiet, happy tones now. If you are training for a marathon, which we are, 6 months, which we have, will be plenty of time. But this means that we are going to be jumping into the training process feet first - no toes, then foot, then leg thing.

That being said, I'm not going to expect anyone to go out and run 10 miles tomorrow. If you could just do that, you wouldn't need to be training. It will be a gradual build up, slowly paying more attention to the intensity and incidence of your workouts (ie more of both) and also focusing on taking care of yourself. You can't work out if you don't sleep and you won't feel the benefits as much if you don't eat right.

For now, I'd say try to increase your workouts to one more a week. Work out once a week now? Aim for twice. 3 times? Aim for 4. You get it. If you only work out for a half hour, add 15 minutes to your time.

Eating right will be covered in another blog, but know this. I eat reasonably well and try to focus on getting enough fruits, vegetables, and protein into my diet. I have no trouble eating enough carbs, but if you don't like bread, a) I'm not sure we can still work together on this and b) make sure you're getting some other kind of carb. I like pasta, rice, cereal...mmm...cereal. Also...I eat reasonably well but I'm also a pig. I eat ice cream and/or chocolate throughout the week and I like BEER. And wine. You will not have to worry about some extra indulgences while training for a marathon. You can't go out and have an ice cream sundae every morning for breakfast (you'll poop it out during your run), but you can enjoy a cone when you're finished :)