I can’t believe I’m doing this. I must be crazy. This isn’t who I am, it certainly isn’t what I do. But, it’s important to step outside of your comfort zone once in a while. For me, that means climbing out of the water. I haven’t trained for anything outside of the water since the 2011 Rock the Parkway Half Marathon. That’s roughly 2 years and 4 months of no measurable amount of running. I found myself more than half way through 2013, and I hadn’t planned a fundraising activity for an Autism charity, something I had done for every year since getting involved with Train4Autism in 2010. Since I volunteered to help organize the 2nd Annual Operation Jack KC Run/Walk in the Snow, it made some sense. So, I’ve set myself up for 4 months of torture while preparing to run the first marathon of my life.
I’M TERRIFIED!!
Running scares me. Running far really scares me. People hurt themselves running. One of the things I love about the sport of swimming, injuries are few and far between. Sure, with swimming I get aches and pains. But, I haven’t had any injury caused by swimming that has slowed me down since I pulled a groin 6 or 7 years ago. And I’ve swum a heck of a lot of laps in those injury free years since then. Not many runners can say that. There’s just so much pounding on the joints, it’s too easy to push it too far. So I’m being careful.
I already had RunKeeper loaded on my phone. Out of curiosity, I looked to see if it had training programs, and sure enough, they had a bunch. I found Run a Marathon in 3:30. Um, NO! Run a Marathon in 4:00. Maybe, but let’s keep looking. Run a Marathon to Finish. BINGO! That’s the one! So, I’m following the program to the letter. The program is written by a professional, and he designed it to get me to the finish line. So I’ll listen to the pro, because I have no idea what I’m doing! I started on September 2, and I’ve completed 6 of the 64 workouts. So far, so good. I was pretty worried about the first long run, 8 miles last Saturday, especially considering it followed running 4 miles just the day before. I held up fairly well, with only a little discomfort in my left foot during the last mile or so. Getting through that, I’m pretty confident I can make it through the next 58 workouts.
Today’s run:
5.38 miles in 51 minutes 55 seconds
Total since September 2:
30.18 miles in 5 hours 12 minutes 57 seconds
That’s it for now. I’ll be back to blog about my training, Operation Jack, Train4Autism, and whatever else is on my mind.
Tony
