What a great morning to start my marathon training! The weather was on the cool side and the humidity was lower than it has been recent days.

Today was an easy three miles and also the first day that I used the Hal Higdon marathon training app. One of my concerns that I have with any running app on a smartphone is the accuracy in the distance actually ran as these apps tend to say you ran farther than you really did. While this may not make too much of a difference on shorter runs, it can make a big difference on those long runs.

This one started fairly well. At the beginning of the run, Hal told me how the training would work and that I should never cheat on my long runs. When we hit the one mile mark Hal told me at the exact same time that my Garmin did–so far so good.

Hal starts talking at various times through the run to offer advice and encouragement. Then he chimed in that we were at the half point, his voice was getting a little annoying. When he let me know we were at the two mile mark he was there before my Garmin was and I got a little sad and he stayed ahead of my Garmin the rest of the way. Hal said I ran a total of 3.15 miles my Garmin says exactly three.

I know that my Garmin is the more accurate device if only because when I ran the marathon last year I pretty much stayed on the blue line, the actual measurement of the 26.2 miles, my Garmin said I ran only a little bit farther.

I’ll have to see about turning off these voice alerts on the app. While I don’t mind the occasional tip or words of encouragement it was a bit much for a three mile run when you include the distance alerts. I’ll have to see how much those can be altered but it will probably be an all or nothing deal.

Overall, I liked the app for this first run of my training. The social networking aspect worked well although it does state your average pace when it posts to Facebook. If you are embarrassed about your ace you may not want to share that info. But I got over the fact that I’m a slower runner a long time ago. I’ve never pretended to be fast and my pace is what it is.

I’ll do some tinkering with the app in preparation for tomorrow’s three miler, but I am so excited that marathon training is finally here!