Week # 1; Day # 1

First official day of marathon training - woo hoo! Only 130 days to go! Before we go into today's blog however; let's re-cap (repetition is a great form of learning you know!):

• Lesson # 1: It takes Determination


• Lesson # 2: It's a Major Time Commitment


• Lesson # 3: You can't Control the Weather

Today's lesson is #4; Have a Goal. Goals are good, they are motivating and can help keep you focused. For first time marathoners (and even for some training for a fourth marathon!) the goal is simply to finish; preferably vertically and not horizontally. In each of my three previous training periods, my goal has been to train harder; which basically meant running more miles and longer distances leading up to race day. Of course, this should support other goals such as merely finishing, having a faster time, etc. That's not always the case however, but we'll leave that for another day.

This year, my goal will be slightly different. As of this morning, Tuesday, September 1st, I weigh 206 pounds. My goal before race day is to lose at least 7 pounds and get down to 199. I haven't weighed less than 200 in many many years. You may think this is a cop out for a goal; surely when I start training for a marathon and running so much, the pounds will just melt away! Not so, in past years, I have actually gained a little weight (lost inches in the waist however) while training. According to my doctor, he feels this is due to increased muscle mass as I build up my leg and arm muscles. Apparently muscle weighs more than fat - or so I am told.

One of the nice side benefits to training for a marathon is that you can eat pretty much what you want because you are burning so many calories. I plan to do that again this year too! However, I will modify my beer/cocktail drinking and now only drink on weekends; alcohol is quite fattening as we all know. So I'm hoping by reducing my alcohol intake; plus my increased running, I can drop the 7 pounds and therfore be lighter on race day. Being lighter means I'll burn less energy hauling this frame across 26.2 miles and will hopefully allow me to perform better. I will weigh myself every Tuesday morning and report the results in this blog so you can see how I'm doing.

My other goal of course is to beat my Personal Record (PR) for a marathon of 4:41:11!

So today I was scheduled to do 5 miles and I did - 100% so far! Temp at run time by the way was 85 degrees, a pleaseant 44% humidity - yielding a heat index of 86; all in all, not bad for this time of year.

Todays "Song of the Blog" for your running MP3 pleasure is Together Forever by Rick Astley.

Ciao for now.....