One Year Marathon

Day Three

Well today was kind of interesting, I had to wake up around 4:40 AM to take care of a business emergency, and it was all worked out by 6:15.  On top of the fact that I was deprived of about an hour and twenty minutes of sleep that I would normally get, it’s cold. It’s really cold here in Dallas and last night it dipped into the mid 20’s, now for those of you who are up in the frigid -12º below weather of the upper midwest this will sound like a nothing.  However the fact of the matter is that its not really ever cold in Texas, so even small chills will get to us. To say the least, running my normal routine on little sleep and in sub-freezing weather were not the ideal conditions for me.

Besides these two proverbial ”speed bumps,” the run was a breeze, I felt a little tight when I began and therefore my stride was shortened, besides that it went great!  I was running at my normal steady pace for the first half of the first rep of my exercise (if that makes any sense), than all of a sudden I felt my legs loosen and boom I was hitting an all new lengthened stride and faster pace!  The rest of my run was at this heightened speed and stride!  Today I ran further and longer with less rest time than I did last time and the later half of my reps were run faster than the first half.

So overall todays run was another good step in the right direction, tomorrow I plan on doing my yoga routine that I missed Wednesday.  Right now my legs feel pretty good and I have lots of energy considering the missed sleep I got. There’s more and more work that needs doing so I’ll leave everyone with this: “The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable pre-requisite for success.”  ~Brian Tracy

 R.C.F 

Day Two

So today was nice to have off, I was a little sore pretty much all over my legs but nothing too bad. Besides the soreness I felt great the whole day, even though I did wake up a little late. I really didn’t have time to do my yoga that I had planned to do, I’m a little upset with my self for not making time to do this. I wanted to see the effect it would have on my sore legs, but we’ll see on Friday. So its going to be a sort post today nothing much exciting happened today, see everyone tomorrow!

R.C.F

Day One

Today was the first day of my training for the marathon, the white rock lake marathon to be more precise.  Which is held annually in my home town of Dallas around the first or second week of December.  The training for an event like this is long and extensive it takes months to build up to the distance you have to run.  A standard marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards, just to give you an physical idea of how far that is to run, Rhode Island is about 30 miles across. So just imagine running across an entire state in about 3 or 4 hours.  

For most people it would be near impossible to get prepared for something like this in just three or four months.  In fact its probably extremely dangerous for anyone to try to get go into this amount of running without any type of warm up or pre training.  This is the reason I’ve begun so early, I’ve never run competitively in my life so I need to get my body in shape for the amount of running it takes just to train for the event.  I have to start out very slow and build from there, the “pre-training” training takes 20 weeks and than I have my 28 week training schedule for the marathon its self.  By the time I reach the end of my training I’ll be running about 35-45 miles a week and running around four to five days per week.  

However today was the first of many baby steps its going to take to reach that goal.  My first two weeks of training I run three days a week and each day I run for five minuets at a time for three repetitions and than to finish my workout I sprint for 15 seconds five times with 45 seconds rests in between repetitions.  Now to most this exercise may sound rather light.  However you have to keep in mind that this whole “pre-training” training is to condition your body for the super long distance that you have to run not only for the marathon but the training its self.         

Actually I started training my self about a week ago, not to run long distances, but to get up earlier.  I’ve never been one of those people who considers themselves a morning person.  I usually slept in and pushed the snooze button at least a couple times before I rolled out of the bed, exhausted, around 8 AM.  So I new, having to be at work by 9, that this habit would not go along with my new training regiment.  So a whole week before I ran one inch, I had to train my self to rise earlier, 6 AM to be precise.  Thank goodness I did so, because for the first three or four days I was not in the mood to get up, let alone run, anywhere!  I wasn’t very active for the first 30 minuets of being awake for the first couple of days, but by day three I was able to get up and began moving around by 6:15 then completed a yoga exercise.  I continued to wake up the rest of the time at six with less and less grogginess as time went on and finally today, when it counted, I got up in a snap.  I wasn’t tired or foggy at all, clear, awake and ready to run! 

So day one is over and I ready for my rest day tomorrow, (which I will actually do yoga on my days off) than I continue my running program on Thursday!  I will try to post daily (I hope to stay on top of this!) on how I feel, my progress, barriers, or anything that comes to mind!  I hope that my journey helps somebody out there who thinks doing something like this is impossible, because if I can do it, anyone can! So go for it, start today!

R.C.F