So my cousin Andy has convinced me to run a marathon. He had recently run a 10 miler and while talking with him about it, I mentioned that I would be interested in running a race with him. At the time I had been casually running a few times a week for about a month and was thinking of doing a 10K, but he suggests a marathon. I’m not one to back down from a challenge, so I run with it.

A month (more or less) later here I am writing this post. I’ve bought a new pair of shoes, mapped out a training plan, and signed up for a 10K qualifier in November. And now that I’ve officially announced my intentions on running this marathon, looks like there is no turning back. So far, training has been tough. Boy, I’ll tell you, things have definitely changed since high school. I feel like I have the legs of an 80 year old. My shins feel like they are going to crumble into dust and I’m only up to 7 miles on my long runs.

Okay, I know, enough whining about my pathetic marathon training. One thing I should mention is the application I’m using to keep track of my training progress. Its called MapMyRun, and it allows you to plot your runs on a google map interface as well as store daily training records to a personalized calendar. It has a boatload of other features too such as elevation and distance calculations of your runs; and pace, speed, and calories burned for each of your training records.

I should probably also mention the training schedule I am using. The creator of the schedule is Hal Higdon who has many famed accomplishments included longest contributing writer to Runners World, author of best selling Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, and eight time Olympic Trial contender.

The marathon I’m planning on running is the Suntrust National Marathon, which is scheduled for March 29, 2008.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 24th, 2007 at 4:50 pm and is filed under sports, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.