New Endeavor

I am excited to start a running blog about my experiences.  I told myself I would get the blog started before I run in the Wichita Prairie Fire marathon this Sunday, so here I am with 1 day to spare.  I'm really several years late, I've been running since 1999, and there have been lots of things to write about in that time.

I've had 2 long term running goals for awhile.  The first is to qualify for the Boston marathon, the second is to run 50 marathons in 50 states.  I'm nowhere close to either right now, my marathon PR is 30 minutes over what I need to get into Boston, and I've only ran marathons in 6 states.

I'm really getting psyched to run the marathon in 2 days, I think I have a shot at blowing away my PR of 3:45.  Hope I didn't just jinx myself by writing that.  I have boosted my training this year to include some 70 mile weeks, up from 40 - 55 mile weeks in years past.

The last thought I want to get across on my very first blog entry is that I believe anyone who is uninjured can run/walk a marathon if they put their mind to it.  Case in point.  I didn't know I was going to run my first marathon until a week before the race when some friends from work invited me to run it with them.  Up to that point, I had never even ran more than about 2 miles at one time in my life.  Now, I wasn't a couch potato either, I played basketball 3 times a week over my lunch hour.  But 26 miles did sound like a long way, so I told my friends I would try to run 6 miles that night and see how it went.  Turns out I wasn't able to run the full 6 miles without taking some walk breaks, and I was a little sore/tight.  However, I rationalized that I could manage to do 4 times that distance, so I signed up for the race just wanting to finish.  Everyone at work thought I was crazy for trying to run a marathon with basketball as my only qualification.  The next weekend I got to the starting line in my $16 pair of Walmart tennis shoes, and to cut to the chase, finished in 5 hours 8 minutes (and I beat the 3 co-workers who talked me into it).  Anyway, I tell that story from time to time to try and encourage others to give that distance a shot.