Training for my first marathon!!

I started this blog to talk about my running. I hope to be able to look back on it and see how far I have come. Though I have been an aspiring runner for about 12 years now my accomplishments have been very few. I don't feel like I have come close to reaching my potential. I have suffered several times from injuries, which I will talk more about later, and I have become disintrested at times. Over the last 3 1/2 years I have been working really hard (when I have been healthy) to reach my potential. Since I did not have a very good base to work with, I made some mistakes that have led to overuse injuries and have sidelined me for months at a time.

My "accomplishments", though embarrassing can be summed up in a very short paragraph. In high school I set the school record for the 400, at 50.2 seconds, although I don't think it ever truly made the record books because my coach did not really care. Perhaps you could hear some disdain in that sentence. I just think if I would have had a good coach early on I could have been much better. In high school I also went to state in the 400. I had the opportunity to run for a division 1 school in college and I passed it up. I still wonder why I did that. After I graduated from graduate school I decided to start running again and went back to what I was good at...the 400. After yet another injury, I decided to start running longer distances. That has gradually progressed to my current goal, which is to run the Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon on May 3rd...only about 14 weeks away. By the way, this will be my first race over 3.1 miles.

To date, my longest run has been 17.5 miles at a pace of about 7:58. In 2008 I ran a total of 678.8 miles, most of which were in the last 4 months, 67% of the total miles were in those last 4 months. Aug.- 50 miles, Sept.- 81.6, Oct.- 93.9, Nov.- 155.8(almost 25% of the total for the entire year), Dec.- 122.1 (it dropped in December because of a minor injury). Since January 1st 2008 I have spent just over 99 hours running.

My goal is to run the marathon in less then 3:10, or 7:14 per mile. At this point, that seems pretty lofty so I will be flexible with that goal as it gets closer and I better predict what my true potential will be.

Today's run was 5 miles at 7:40 per mile. It was 13 degrees outside and that was my first day to run outside in 4 weeks, due to a minor injury. Month to date I have run 30.5 miles.