running log - 4/25/06

35 minutes in the dark. alone, but with encouragement.

yeah, darrin wimped out on me. actually, he'd already run 6 miles with his training group for the indy mini, so instead of running with me, he simply encouraged me by sarcastically yelling "looking good" or "c'mon pick it up a little" or trying to hand me water each of the 10 times i passed his house last nite. this was usually followed by me cussing at him. ahhh well, at least it made the run more interesting. and that was good, because i didn't feel especially strong last nite. my pace was pretty slow and i had trouble settling into a groove. but i guess i'm still getting my "legs" back after being off for a while.

on a happier note, my son andrew, who runs track for his middle school, set a 6th grade school and county record monday nite in the 1600. he covered the mile in 5:39. yikes. i can't come close to matching that. he's undefeated in the mile and the 800 so far. what a freak! he and his twin brother nathan are really enjoying track this spring and plan on continuing to run through the summer. way to go boys!

well, no running tonite, but i've got 3 miles or so to do on thursday. yessss!

and they're off...

days 1 and 2 - check!

well the marathon training has "officially" started now. i did 4 miles on saturday and another 3+ last nite. the schedule i am using has me running by miles on the weekend long runs, and in minutes on the weekdays. that's good, plus the midweek runs are never longer than an hour which is important since i do this running at nite and anything too much longer than that in the dark becomes unbearable.

at this point i'm running a nice easy pace for me, in the low 9's. i have no reason to push it, plus i want to enjoy as much of this as possible. darrin and i ran together last nite. he's training for the indy mini in a couple of weeks, and also ironman wisconsin in september. he's been doing quite a bit of biking and swimming, but running? notsomuch. we're fairly close in ability still, so it works well.

i haven't had any muscle soreness after running lately, which is a good sign because it means i'm regaining some of the fitness i'd lost when i was recovering from the surgery. i'm eating too much, though. i still weigh almost exactly the same as i did in january, but i had been a few pounds under. i might start up a food log like i did in january. a food journal is quite a deterrant to eating when after eating something, you have to enter the food and the calories into a database. anyone who wants to lose weight should try this. it's really an eye-opener.

oh well. 35 minutes is on the schedule for tonite. it's a nasty day here and i hope it stops raining before i run later. fingers crossed!

a new goal

day zero

first off, i just want to catch up and say that the transplant went better than ever could have been expected. my sister is doing wonderfully, and i came through it much more easily than i ever thought i would. ok, nuff said about that.

after a couple of years of dawdling around, trying to convince myself that i wanted to do another ironman, i've finally come to peace with the fact that an ironman is just not in the cards for me right now. that doesn't mean i'll never do another one, but it'll be a while. i just do not have the time to adequately train for an event like that. i suppose i could probably get myself to the point where i could finish under the 17-hour cutoff, but i'm not sure i want that at this point. i did alot of running before the transplant surgery, and really started liking it. after thinking about it a bit, i realized that while the best i could do in ironman right now is a total back-of-the-pack finish, i could train enough to become a middle-of-the-pack marathon finisher. run training i can do anytime. i always run at nite anyway, and long runs on weekends are doable. the problem with ironman training is that biking is difficult because i don't really have any daytime hours free, especially during the week. swimming is almost impossible, because the town where i work now doesn't have a facility like a YMCA where i could go swim. when i trained for my ironman a few years ago, i had a work schedule that gave me the morning free (to bike), and was located only a couple of miles from the IU natatorium in indianapolis. this allowed me to get in sufficient time swimming and biking, and i just can't see that happening in the foreseeable future.

so what's the plan now? the chicago marathon. that's my new adversary. tomorrow is officially day one of my 6-month training plan. i've been running semi-regularly since the middle of february, so it's not like i'm starting completely over, but i'm not in as good shape as i was in late january. i ran 4 times this past week, 3-4 miles each time. tomorrow calls for three miles, but i might do more since i'm a little ahead of the game at this point.

i'm very excited to finally have a long term goal. i'm working on some targets that i'll be shooting for, and i'll post them in the coming months. this is going to be a fun summer of training. the weather is already looking up, and i feel great.

day one is tomorrow. i can't wait.