Restarting this thing

OK, so this is the first post in this series and it comes about 4 weeks late, since I’m in week #4 right now. I’ve been meaning to really start blogging about something, but never had the “theme” that would keep me coming back to post regular updates. Now I do – I decided to regale everyone with my training story as I prep for my first “real” marathon. I say “real” because I did complete a marathon last year – I'll get into the details in a bit – but I don’t really count for reasons I'll soon explain.

First, a little background – I'm 40 (h/t to Mike Gundy – “I'm 40! I'm a man!”) and I've been running on and off for about 7 years now. I live entirely too far away from my office, which puts a crimp in morning runs; meaning afternoon runs are either done on a treadmill or on a 4-mile loop in an industrial park – good times! I'm training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon in November and I'm working on Week 5 of the training plan. My goal is to finish in under 4:30, but as my long run during training was only 9 miles, I have no idea where I'm really tracking. Prior to turning 40, I “ran” the AF marathon at Wright-Patt. Ran is in quotation marks, because I was working to complete the distance without training for it – my youngest had been born only a few weeks beforehand and any thoughts I had of distance training (and there weren’t many) went out the window when he rolled in. Let’s leave the gory details alone for now and just say that it was ugly and I want to improve.

My intent for this little exercise is to post updates on my runs – simple as that – along with my various triumphs and travails as I go through the process. My hope is to update 3-4 times per week, but actual results may vary as they say. I hope this little intro serves to pique the interest of anyone who stumbles across this little slice of the internet – look for more soon