Did I Mention, I am Going to do it!!

18 miles last night. Ran the Falmouth Road Race course out and back and tacked on an extra 4 miles to get the eighteen. Felt good and finished in a decent amount of time. I have not been wearing a watch and do not plan to in the near future, but I estimate that I did it in around 3:15. I'll take it. I also took the time to get in some good stretching afterwards which is key to avoid next day soreness, I feel great today. I really do feel that the marathon is in my sights and that when April 16 comes around I will be able to get it done.

3 Miles isn't that far

I feel great this morning!! Got out for a quick 3 mile run. I am hoping to make this my regular morning route now that the 1.5 mile route was getting a little easy. Plus, I am still working on getting up to 7 miles for the Falmouth Road Race. I figure that by the time I reach the end of June or early July that I will graduate to a 5 mile route as my regular route. Shooting for 7 miles by the end of July so that I am ready for the race at the beginning of August. I am a little nervous, but I am going to do it no matter what. It is a good goal for me and will hopefully be a stepping stone to other races and goals that will help keep me fit. I am not trying to lose any more weight, but if it is a product of how I eat and workout then so be it. I looked up online what my suggested weight is for my height and age and it lists it in a range from 180 to 211. Yeah Right!!!!!! I have not been under 200 lbs. since the beginning of my sophomore year in high school. What a joke! I would be psyched if I made it into the 220's never mind being skin and bones, I will leave that to the runway models. Right now I weigh less than I have in over 10 years. While teaching in West Springfield (without children), Christine and I managed to use an awesome gym on a regular basis and I was really fit, not thin, but fit and probably weighed close to what I weigh now. When I ever started teaching high school and eating out all the time and then taking care of children I just really let it go and I am never going to let that happen again. I weigh 243 lbs. right now and feel great. many people around work are noticing my weight loss and it is really motivating to hear all of the compliments. It helps keep me going when I feel like it is getting tough.

Not so Fast / Far / Long

Yesterday afternoon Thomas had a soccer practice so I was planning on running for 70 minutes straight. No dice! I did not even come close to what I did last week. I was really hoping that I could build on that experience and prove to myself once and for all that I will be able to do the Falmouth Road Race. Well, I will not be running it tomorrow that is for sure. Probably good to know that still have a lot of work and training to do. I am going to try and start doing my 3 mile run for my morning run instead of the mile and a half I normally do. It will mean getting up a little earlier, but only an extra 10-15 minutes or so. After 38 minutes I was unable to keep myself going last night which was really unfortunate. If 3 miles becomes easy to me then I can open it up to a longer distance from time to time and eventually be ready for 7 miles by August.

I am a runner!

Never thought I would say it, but I think I just might be a runner. Christine got me really fired up about running the Falmouth Road Race. I signed up once before and I am not quite sure why I didn't run it, but I chickened out. Christine ran it and I watched her with the kids. Perhaps some old running race wounds. I was pretty quick when I was a kid and my dad brought me to a few running races. Somewhere along the line not winning made me a bit discouraged and I stopped doing the running races. Pretty dumb, but i was maybe in second grade.

Last night during Thomas' soccer practice and doubts of whether or not I would be able to run 7+ miles by August running through my head, I made the choice to start running at the beginning of his practice and see how long I could run for. I have been timing my pace on my normal mile and a half loop that I do around the neighborhood and it has been around the 9 minute mile mark (I am definitely not breaking any land speed records with that i know). I ended up running for 53 minutes. Now I do not want to get too excited and I am sure that I was probably going a bit slower than my normal pace, but let's just say I was doing a 9 minute and 30 second mile (I think I was going faster, but for the sake of erring on the worse side), that would mean I went somewhere between 5 and 6 miles. Considering the longest I had been running up until this point was 3.4 miles once or twice a month I am pretty psyched. In addition, I could have kept going too. One of the drawbacks that I have noticed about running is that my back gets really sore. Usually the night of a morning run or in the morning after I have slept. During this long run I was feeling tightness in my back for the last few laps and I decided to stop, plus I knew I had gone a fair distance and was growing increasingly curious as to how long/far I had run. Definitely could have banged out another mile as far as stamina was concerned. I need to do a bit of research on what I might be doing to cause this back issue, but either way it is not major and is worth me being in shape and healthy. The pain is not in anyway causing me to take pills.