I've Made a Commitment

Well, I made a financial commitment this morning by joining the Pearland Fit training group. I have to stick with it now and finish the marathon, or my wife will kill me. The only way I won't do the marathon now is if I don't get selected in the lottery system for the registration. The first meeting for the training group is this Saturday, July 17. Wish me luck.

Sticking with it...So Far

Well, it's been a week and a half since I started running again. I haven't missed a day yet, running on MWFS. I've felt good and haven't been sore or fatigued. I'm just concentrating on getting a little bit of a base established before I get into the higher mileage. I've been running anywhere from 2.5 to 3.25 miles each time out. I've been concentrating on not starting out too fast and running negative splits. So far, so good. We'll see if I can keep it up until the marathon at the end of January.

I'm debating if I should join Pearland Fit. Pearland Fit is a training program with a local group that provides coaching and workouts here locally. It costs another $120 in addition to the marathon entry fee. I know last time I ran a marathon, I seriously lacked motivation to do the longer runs on my own. We'll see what I decide.

First Run

I started my training today. I know race day is still a long way off, but it has been five years since I have run. I did better than I expected, but I also realized I had a long way to go. I had no idea how far I was going to run when I left the house. I was just going to run a loop around the neighborhood. I'll have to plan out some routes so I can get my distances down for my training runs when I get into the training program.

Distance: 2.40 Miles
Time: 21:25
Avg Pace: 8:56 per Mile

How it Started

I have once again gotten the itch to start running again. It started a few weeks ago when I saw an ad for a marathon training group here in Pearland. Then, I got a message from a high school friend on Facebook saying a group of our high school classmates should run the Chevron Houston Marathon in January. I thought about it for a few days, but not seriously.

This week on the "Biggest Loser" they ran a marathon like they do every season. One of the contestants did pretty well. He ran a 4:02 marathon. That did it for me. I decided to run another marathon. I was a little embarassed that a guy that weighed in at 375 pounds six months ago beat my marathon time by 5 minutes. I know I can run better than the 4:07 I did five years ago if I train properly.

My goal for the Chevron Houston Marathon on January 30, 2011 is to run a sub-4 hour marathon. I would really like to get below 3:45. We'll have to see how training goes. My ultimate goal if I can stick with it for another couple of years is to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

I'm going to use this blog as my training log. I'll log the details of my runs from here.