The Start of Year #2

Recovering from the marathon took a few days for me to finally walk straight again. The feeling of accomplishment hasn't diminished though it has been months since the marathon. Along with that feeling is the feeling of wanting to do better. However, I have gotten off to a slow start this year. After the marathon I took a few weeks off. After about 4-6 weeks I heard that it only takes 6 weeks for your body to forget everything it learned in training for a marathon in 6 weeks. WHAT?! So, in December I ran once or twice to make sure my body didn't totally forget everything it had done over the past year. Then in January I resolved to be better with my running. So for 2 weeks I did a good job of sticking to my plans. I ran Jan 6th, 8th, 11th, 13th, and the 22nd. Each for 3 miles and all were either 9 minute miles or below, with my best pace being 8:15 minute miles. Then a wrench got thrown into the cogs of my routine.

My wife and I were expecting our 4th child. Her due date was Jan 31st, but Deb started contracting weeks before that. So with our child possibly coming at any moment I stopped running. Our 4th daughter decided she wanted to hold out all the way until her actual due date (a first for our babies). So all that time I spent waiting, expecting her to come came and went and my wife was still uncomfortably pregnant. Eventually our now youngest came with much fanfare, but my training suffered because of it. Now that she's here I should have a better opportunity to train, well at least that was what I thought until she stopped sleeping at night. I have found it is difficult to drum up motivation to do anything much less run when you are dead tired. Even so, February came and went without me running once (well running while playing tag with my girls inside the house doesn't really count).

Well, I was able to run once this past week. I was pretty gassed by mile 2 and I figured it wasn't a good idea to try and push it too hard, so I ended up running 2.5 miles for 20 minutes and 45 seconds at a pace of 8:18 minute miles. I'm still able to keep my speed, but I'm going to have to slow it down for a few weeks to get my distance back up.

Since this is my first post of the new year my goals for this running year is to train yet again for a marathon (preferably the same one I ran last year) and run it in under 4 hours. In leading up to that race I will also run a 10K in May (the same 10K I ran last year) and run it a little faster as well as run one or 2 other races this year. Those distances are yet to be determined, but preferably they will be another 10K and a half marathon to prepare me for my 2nd marathon in the fall. To accomplish this I plan to be more faithful to my training that I was last year, slowly increase my distance as to not injure myself again and add a better diet to maximize my training routine. I feel with the success I had last year these goals are very achievable and I look forward to a great year. That is it for now. Gotta Run!