I'm Ready To Start Now

Well after eight months of half-assed training and a complete disaster of a marathon in Cleveland I'm ready to go after a race goal. Actually I've started picking up the pace over the past month or so. I want to get back to where I was in 2006 where I had a sub-1:44 half marathon. Of course in 2006 I thought every run needed to be all out ~ all the time which lead to a hamstring injury that took a year to heal. In that time all of my speed disappeared.

I'm determined to comeback now. I've decided to run the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, Alabama on December 12. There are a couple of reasons I picked this race. First, I went to college at the University of North Alabama which is about an hour from Huntsville. Second, the race isn't until December. This gives me some time to work on speed before really starting to ramp up the mileage. I found a 5K plan in Running Times that I used to build the first 7 weeks of training then I used my 2006 Chicago plan (yeah the one I got hurt using) for the marathon prep. I hope to build my speed and get my weight down by September then build for December 12.

I decided to try to sell out and put the effort into a fall marathon around mile 19 of the Cleveland debacle. I've been getting ready to start by running faster on many of my runs and building my plan. Today I got some additional motivation by reading the latest post by Brianna Glenn, Long Jumper on the US World Championship team that will be heading to Berlin soon. She finished second at the US Championships and made the World Championships team after years of effort, perseverance and commitment. Her post today was an inspiration that made it easy to get out on the road today...Thanks Brianna, Best of luck in Berlin.