Marathons

Doing my long runs on a treadmill (at least occasionally) is starting to hold some appeal. I have a long backlog of movies I've wanted to see and with 20 to do today I needed a 3-hour-plus film - found it with 'The Green Mile'. When else do I have 3+ hours to kill? Pretty good movie and pretty good 20-mile (3:11) training run. Can't complain about either. Think I need to get back outdoors for the next one, although with football season almost here who knows?

Took advantage of this week's moderate weather to get my speed (term used loosely) and tempo runs in on Tuesday and Thursday nights. 5.86 miles in 55:16 on Tuesday - with my HR and pace flying all over the place (I chose to use the roads and not the high school track). Neighbors must have been confused if they were watching (he's sprinting, he's walking, he's sprinting again...) 6 miles in 53:02 on Thursday - decent tempo run although hotter than Tuesday and I felt it. In between on Wednesday was a business dinner which, while great for business, was definitely not helpful for my training.

At Simon's suggestion switched from the Higdon to the Furman Institute training method this week. A bit late to the game but thought it was worth a try.

Was a bit of an adjustment going from slogging through slow miles to running a series of (relatively) fast 800's. But it was certainly different and felt pretty good - despite the fact I didn't quite hit my desired times.

First of all, I want to thank Simon and everyone who commented on my admittedly whiny post the other day.

I know from at least some experience how great it feels to finish a marathon, but I clearly could use some advice on a better way to get there. I dropped out of my marathon training last year because I hated the drudgery so much - that won't happen this year (hotels & flights are booked and paid for in Chicago, and the family's looking forward to the trip!) but getting there's the hard part.

This is the part of marathon training I really have a tough time with. 'Putting in the miles' as I remember from Hal Higdon's book.

Scrambled home from work for a 10K (6.2M/59:36) yesterday and another 5K on the treadmill today (3.1/27:32). Neither run was any fun - workmanlike at best. Will take tomorrow off and try to mentally prepare myself for 15 on Saturday. Yuck.

I know it's important and necessary, but doesn't mean I have to like it.

My Chicago Marathon training is off to a less-than-stellar beginning (and yes, I know that marathon training should start a bit more than 75 days prior to the race...)

I had a mediocre 10-miler Wednesday in Chicago (10 very flat miles along the beach in 1:40:12), followed up with a 5K (3.1/29:27) on Friday and then a half (13.1/2:16:34) yesterday.

At the end of May, after completing the Bay to Breakers, I realized I only had two months left to train for my first marathon; San Francisco Marathon, on July 29th, 2007. I don't really race Bay to Breakers because of that initial push of humanity for the first few miles, and with a distance of 12k, it's not really an exercise in endurance. I had been running with coworkers leading up to it, training mostly around the 6 mile mark, and needed to push that up to 26.2.

So here it. My very first blog entry EVER. What took me so long? Well, lets just say that I'm a private person and am more of a listener than a talker. But after years of tossing around the idea to run a marathon, I finally decided that this was the year. I signed up to run the Marine Corp Marathon this October.

On Sunday October 7, 2007, I will be running in my first endurance marathon. As part of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team IN Training, I am joining hundreds of people around the country to train and run in The LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.

Through the Team In Training program, I will have a certified coach, a training schedule nutritional advice, a great team of athletes with a common goal and lots of support. I am working to achieve a minimum of 2500.00. you can help the fight against blood cancers by making a 100% tax deductible donation towards my fundraising efforts. You can donate online at my TNT website: http://www.active.com/donate/tntmi/tntmiDJankul

Well week 2 of training is in the bag! My mileage for the week was 22, with a long run of 8.5 on Sunday. Some of the highlights included new running shoes, being chased by a dog and running more then planned. All in all a good week.

I started it off by going to Born to Run, http://www.borntoruninc.com/, a local running shop which offers discounts for those running for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. After analyzing my foot and having me run a treadmill they brought out several shoes for me to choose from. I tried them all on and ran in each pair. The shoe that fit the best and felt the best running in was the Nike air zoom vomero 2. After a week in running in them they feel great and have a great cushiony feel to them when I run.