Woke up this morning at 7:30 A.M. Doesn't sound like much, but for a guy that has been getting five and half hours sleep all week, going to bed at midnight and getting seven and half hours of sleep is indescribable. #2 son had soccer practice at 9 AM, and I wanted to take advantage of this and get in a morning run. You see, the late night runs for me keep me up until past midnight during the week. Also, I knew it would be cooler at 9 AM in the morning, and I wanted to take advantage of that.
So, I get up at seven-thirty so I can make the family breakfast. Did you guys know I like to cook? Well, I do. And not just easy stuff either. I'm a budding chef, and I like to cook all kinds of meals. Tonight I'm making Texas Chilli and tomorrow I'm making steaks AND Gumbo. The gumbo is for later in the week when I don't have time to cook.
Dee Dee asked me if we should be eating forty minutes before we ran. "Not to worry!", I said. We are eating light, just a little bit of scrambled eggs and some sausage. Turns out I was right. Eggs and sausage is OK 40 minutes before you run. Just don't eat six eggs and 10 pieces of sausage :-)
We get to #2's soccer field and the weather was a balmy 80 degrees. Oh, the joy of running! LOL. I ran 3.8 miles up and down the road in front of my son's soccer fields, and Dee Dee joined me for most of that. But what a difference the temperature makes. I was breathing fine. I got my heart rate up into the high sixties. No problem. The temperature was definitely rising though, and by the time #2 got through with practice, it was 90 degrees.
We fitted Dee Dee for running shoes today at Phidipedies. I probably spelled that wrong, but it is a running store in Atlanta named after the Greek dude that died after delivering the message from Marathon. She only tried on like 12 pairs of shoes before we decided on one that would work. That's cool, though. That's the whole reason we went there, to make sure Dee Dee got herself a good pair of shoes.
I picked up Jeff Galloway's book, "A Year Round Plan", and I SO want to run the Atlanta Marathon in 2007. You guys talk me out of it. I'm already scared of week 29 where I'm supposed to run 13.1 miles. Never mind a marathon! We'll see LOL.
My friends, until next time, finish strong!!
Wes
ORN: 48 minutes, 3.8 miles, R10/W1, mixed pace with the boss :-)
Race Day: 42 days and counting
9 comments:
"the Greek dude that died after delivering the message from Marathon" LOL, that would be Pheidippides
i'm in SC, when is the Atlanta marathon? i can't believe i just asked that, i have yet to run 13.1 myself!
Ok your scholariness! The Atlanta Marathon is in November this year. I assume it will be in November next year. Plenty of time to train. Where abouts in SC do you live? Just got back from Charleston. Luved it!!
A marathon in a year - you can do that! Sorry, I'm not talking you out of it. :) But, I'd say try a 1/2 first. See what you think. My first 1/2 - in June - convinced me I'm not wanting to do a marathon - for now.
I don't think you'll find mnay runners who will talk you "out of" running a marathon. More than likely, we will convince you to do it!
Yeah, that marathon bug bit me, too. I am thinking about trying the Chicago marathon - next year. Chicago is in October. But I am taking Annette's advice and doing a half marathon in the spring. Then we'll see how enthusiastic I am about it.
Keep up the good work and before you know it 13.1 will be a normal short run on the weekend. I say go for the full at Altanta, you'll totally love it.
Wes,
As a recent signer-upper for my first marathon (in 6 short weeks), I think you should go for it! Go for it! Do it! You've got a whole year to reach those higher mileages. You can do it!
Talk you out of it? Whyever for? You can do it - I know that the high mileage runs seem rather daunting now, but the progress is actually fairly gradual, and they will seem less daunting as you get closer to them.
I do agree somewhat with annette, however - try a half first, before committing to the full deal. It will boost your confidence in yourself and your training regimen.
I think that 15 months is more than enough time for somebody to decide to train for and run a marathon no matter what sort of shape they are currently in (barring something that keeps them bound to a hospital bed for half the year...)
A friend of mine that I work with just ran his first marathon this past Memorial Day, and he did not start running until last Spring or last Summer. He ran a 10k this past weekend and cut 5 minutes off of his time from last year. So it is certainly doable.
The trick is finding the right training plan and making sure you do not get injured. I reviewed Marathon Rookie at my website last year, and I think that it has a pretty good program for a first time marathoner that does not have a lot of running and racing experience. You may want to consider checking it out; he has a lot of good tidbits on his website that you can look at for free that are also in the eBook, so it will give you an idea of whether you think it is worth plopping any money down for.
My goal is to write a book on training for a marathon probably near the end of this year. It will be geared towards somebody who has already run a few, though, and is aiming to be a little more competitive. I would definately go with a beginner program.
If you do want to run it, then you will want to start training in July for it, so you'll probably want to figure on taking most of next June fairly light as a recovery period from any winter and spring running or racing you decide to do. You probably should try to find a Spring half marathon to run.
So yeah, you aren't going to get a lot of people trying to talk you out of it from this crowd...
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