Pre-Turkey Thoughts

This is why I can’t be a blogger. I don’t blog nearly enough for anyone who may actually be reading this to keep up with it. I didn’t run over the weekend, but ran yesterday, a slow seven miler on the treadmill, which, if you haven’t done much treadmill running, is equal to death. I was so bored that I started counting the seconds down after the start of every minute. I guess it’s all practice for all these “Marathon Mindgames” I’ve heard so much about.

Tomorrow I’m running a turkey trot in Rochester. If I wake up for it that is. One of the greatest frustrations I have with my brother is that he constantly underestimates how long it will take to get anywhere and then overcompensates by being a total ass about how it’s not his fault that he’s late – there was traffic, obviously. As if traffic is a foreign concept to him living in New York City. On Thanksgiving. Anyway, it is now 9pm (I’m saving this on the Mac before I post it) and we are still about 3 hours from our destination. Perfect. Just the kind of night’s sleep I was hoping for before running 4.4 miles.

Moving away from running just a bit (because in my first blog, I promised I’d divulge any fantastic gossip about my love that may take place), I am going to London in January. To see a boy. Okay, well not only to see a boy but the impetus of this sort of impromptu international trip was the fact that said boy offered my friend Alex and I free accommodations at his flat in London, whenever we wanted. Tickets were booked within days. Do I have to sleep with him? Probably. Do I care? Not in the least. There’s a good chance we’ll get a few meals out of it as well so I’m 100% in it to win it. I’ve slept with people for less.

Now the trick will be not to let anyone who would disapprove (and that’s everyone that I know) find out that I’m going to London for the reasons detailed above. We’ll see what happens.

Make you a deal. You keep reading, I’ll keep running

Naked Friday Night

Whether by accident or out of sheer laziness, there are days where I just don't feel like putting on clothes after I shower. Today was one of those days. I did a slow 6 miler at the gym and then stood in the shower for a good ten minutes longer than I needed to for the sole purpose of delaying putting on clothing and walking out into the freezing cold. 

Which brings me to a (running) connundrum: if I find it difficult to go outside, let alone run, what the heck am I doing training for a marathon (my FIRST marathon) in the coldest four months of the year.  I guess it will make me a stronger runner and hopefully (barring injury) I'll be able to complete 5 mars this year.

Anyway, as I said, I did a slow 6 miles today on the treadmill. I haven't "officially" started following my racing training schedule, but I figured I should at least try to up my mileage, which will be the most important part.  I felt good after the run and surprisingly not very sweaty. I was running at a 10 minute mile pace, but compared to where I was this past winter when I started running, running 6 miles at a 10 minute mile and not even feeling terribly sweaty/fatigued is something I never thought I'd be able to say.

Cross-training tomorrow, hiking in Connecticut on Sunday, and then official race training starts Monday. I think this weekend, if I have time, I'm going to plan out my year of marathons and see if I can space them out well enough that I get a good variety of runs around the country (and perhaps even internationally) and also a decent amount of rest time in between each. I feel like if the guy who wrote the marathon book that I'm reading can run 50 marathons in 50 weeks, I can run 5 a year.

Make you a deal: you keep reading, I'll keep running.

Shower Epiphanies

I never really thought blogging was something I'd ever do. I'm not very good at keeping a consistant journal, mostly because I never really have much to say (or more likely I'm too spastic to focus on any one thing for more than like 35 seconds). I have a personal journal, but I've had it since Summer 2006, when I spent two months in Ecuador. Needless to say, the entries, while not too few, are certainly far between. Other endeavors to maintain the writing skills that I so diligently exercised throughout my collegiate education include my three-day-old running journal (which was free with my subscription to Runner's World which I haven't actually paid for). But only because I only have to write three or four sentances (legs tired, shins sore, should have hydrated, drinking until 3am probably resulted in that pile of vomit on 23rd and Lex even though it's 9am on Sunday morning).

So ultimately, blogging which, by definition, requires constant attention, daily maintenance, and a certain ability to be completely honest while still being discreet, is not something I think I will be good at. But, as with many things in life, we'll see.

Anyway, today in the shower I decided that I needed a goal. (No, not setting up a blog. I don't like writing that much.) I recently decided to run my first marathon. The Virginia Beach Shamrock Marathon on March 22, 2009 to be exact. But I thought "A lot of people run marathons -- how am I any different?". So I thought I would try to trump myself. Create a goal so lofty, yet still possible, that I would seriously have to push myself extremely hard to achieve it...

I am going to run 30 marathons by the time I turn 30.

Keep in mind, I haven't run one marathon. Ever. I've run two half marathons, a 10k, and a 5k. That's it. I haven't ever run a distance longer than 13.1 miles at one time. But in the shower this morning, I decided that I could push myself to race 26.2 miles 30 times in the next 6.5 years. That averages 5 marathons a year. Some people do one marathon in their lifetime and I'm trying to do 5 a year for the next SIX years. Nevermind injury, mental exhaustion, and a host of other factors that could absolutely kill this goal for me. This basically means for the next six years I will be constantly training, keeping a pretty strict diet, and traveling. A lot. I don't even know if this is a realistic goal. I could HATE running marathons (but my feeling is that I won't).

I should probably set some rules for this, so that I can stay motivated and so that in six years, I can say that I did what I set out to do. So here they are (amendable at will...a caveat that any good employee at a law firm would include):

1. I must complete 30 marathons by the time I am 30 years old. Should I walk, run, crawl, crutch to the finish line, I must finish.

2. I will run the 30th marathon on my 30th birthday: May 30th, 2015 (which happens to be a Saturday and I'm pretty sure, a sign from God that this is something that I am meant to do). (This bars any injury that I may have at that time. If I am injured at that time, I will give myself until the end of 2015 to complete my 30th. That is the only caveat to this rule.)

3. If I complete an Ironman, the marathon run at the end of the Ironman can count (hey, 26.2 miles is 26.2 miles, no matter how you slice and dice. But seriously, if I have time to train for an while also completing 4 marathons in that year then I'm out of my mind).

Those are all the rules I have at this point. I'm sure I'll think of some others as I'm training, but right now, those seem to be the most obvious ones. This blog in particular will serve as a daily (or weekly or monthly or however-many-times-I-can-get-my-butt-to-post-ly) training log toward my goal (but who the heck wants to read about running all the time. If anything else interesting happens in my life, I'll be sure to post about it. I'm not much for secrets and if you're reading this, you obviously know me, and therefore you're certainly one for gossip.)

So thirty by thirty is my new goal. I hope in 6 1/2 years I'll be able to write a blog entry that says I am out of my mind, but I completed my 30th marathon (or something along those lines).

Make you a deal: you keep reading, I'll keep running.