Planning for a Marathon

My alarm went off for the first time in a month this morning, I've really gotten used to sleeping in until 8am every morning and waking up on my own. I quickly got up and got all my cold Under Armour gear on and ate a quick simple breakfast with cereal, bananas, granola bar and peanut butter. I also fueled up with some sugar free red bull. I always frink one before a road race and in my mind it helps:

Since the race was in town we didn't leave the house until 10 minutes before it started. I ran a little to warm up because it was 42 degrees here this morning. I then got my number and t-shirt and lined up. It was a small race, lots of college kids because it was for their homecoming.

When we started I hit go on my iPod and it was the first time I ever brought my iPod to a race to help me keep my pace up to hopefull PR. The route was great and there were a lot of college wrestlers running this that were keeping a 6:30/7:00 mile pace and I tried to keep up with them as much as possible. When I realized how close we were to the end I looked down at my iPod and it said 20:30 minutes I booked it and ended up PRing the he!! out of this race. I got 21:17 and my normal is 23:30 about. I can't believe how great I did for not really training and slacking on the nutrition lately, something in the Iowa air?
Anyways I got 1st place and and won 5lbs. of gummy worms, my favorite! Also had a post-race banana and granola bar.

An older lady (maybe 30) came up to me right after the race and said good job and asked my time and I told her I shaved 2 minutes from all previous 5k's. She asked if I did marathons too and I told her I want to but haven't made it that far yet. She said I would do great at marathons given my current running PR and training I've been doing lately.
After that conversation it got me thinking about why I haven't gone after marathons yet, I mean I've been running 7 years, my moms ran at least 8 marathons, I've done about 20-30 5k's and10k's and I'm good. A lot of others around me including some other wonderful blog ladies are doing marathons and completing their goals like that. So I'm thinking about signing up for a marathon this coming June because I need to stop fearing marathons and know that I'm fully capable of this great feat. The one I'll be doing is Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, MN,it's a beautiful course. Sign up isn't until January and it's a first come, first serve basis and I know getting a hotel can be hard, so I'm crossing my fingers and praying to get in. Even though it's almost 9 months to go I still want to start training and preparing now because I want to make sure I'm healthy enough to do it.

If you have any tips or advice on planning I would love to hear it!

Onto after race fuel I had some Amazing Grass from the package I won from Lynn and Christy over at the Actor's Diet. It was great for some post-race energy and thanks for the win girls!

After stretching out the hammies and quads I had some Aged White Cheddar Chips, amazing flavor!

I'm off to work again for day 2 of day 6 straight!