run a marathon

for everything and more and more I see that the place is here and the time is now. I completed this goal not through hard work, careful planning, and the alignment of planets—but rather I was unprepared, it was spurr of the moment and I figured I had nothing to lose. Guess I should seize these moments more often

I was going good with the runs….pushing from the 12 and 14 I had been doing to 17, then 18, then 20. Oh god….once I passed 16 miles my body just shuts down. Shortly thereafter I moved to go to school. Two runs exploring the city left me with serious joint pain in my left hip-socket. It hurt enough that I had trouble sleeping.

So, rather than jepordize my health to meet this goal in the timeline I had hoped….I am going to have to postpone it and be a little wiser with my training.

After returning from spain, which turned out to be a break from my running, I am finally back to my training program. Perhaps its a bad idea, but I just picked up the training program where I would as if I had been running the previous three weeks. Now I have myself scheduled to run 17 miles tomorrow. That is, uh, 4 miles further than I have ever run in my life. 1…2…3..jump!!

Choosing to run the 10 miles rather than stopping at 5 wasn’t much of a descision. Last year I ran the 5, and I knew the second loop wouldn’t be a cake walk. But, wanting to be able to feel accomplished and a sense of progress, simply improving my time wouldn’t do. Uphill, downhill, uphill, uphill, downhill, uphill.

There were a couple of young guys at about the same pace. One ended up finishing ahead, and one fell back. At the end of the first loop, a giant climb, a runner was struggling to finish and we reached the finish line together—she had finished and I had a second lap to do.

The second lap started out slow. There were three runners that were ever within sight. After getting passed, I stopped feeling so run down and passed her—right before the finish I overtook the other runner to finish in 1:32:12 with a 44:09 split. Last year’s 41:31 was 2 1/2 minutes faster, but with the extra distance I am still elated.

Well, after looking at marathons both locally and abroad, it seems that my best shot is to pick one in the fall. There are very few marathons in june-july-august, probably due to the heat. So, this gives me 16 weeks of training. By that time I will be a running champ. The 3 weeks that I am away will throw a wrench into my training plans—which I just found by the way. I can use Hal’s intermediate program, and start in week 3. I will have to modify slightly to add three easy weeks for weeks 6, 7, and 8. No big deal though.

for a while with 6-9 mile runs. I need to get a marathon training plan and choose a marathon to run!