I have created my first health/fitness goal for 2008, run the Kaiser Permanente San Francisco Half Marathon on Feb. 3. The decision to run this race came about in two fold. First, I am 3 pounds away from achieving my 25-lb weight loss goal which I am determined to reach by Jan. 1. That's 12 days to drop 3 pounds. I am so there!
Since I will be achieving one goal, I figured it would be a good time to set another goal to work on. Secondly, since I've been on such a roll with the running, I thought it would be a good personal challenge to enter a race. At the end, I'll have a ribbon, a t-shirt, and the satisfaction of completing something physically challenging. And of course, what great content for the blog...hehehe.
My decision to run this half marathon came about by accident. All the breakup anger energy I've been experiencing has somehow made its way in a positive direction in my running. All of a sudden I have all this energy and have been able to reach some new running milestones because the breakup anger has been pushing me a bit harder. I get into that zone while running "That guy doesn't know what he's missing" and before I know it I'm running a bit harder and longer. It's been fantastic that I can transfer anger energy into something positive. Now, because I've been running for years already, and have hurt myself before, I am better at knowing when pushing too much will turn into injury so I am pushing in a challenging yet safe way.
So, because the running has been going well, I thought why not try entering a race. At first, I was only looking at 5K & 10K races because that is easily doable at my fitness level. For fun, I took a look at training schedules for half marathons and was shocked to discover that at the level I'm running now, I could run a half marathon today. I am in much better shape than I thought I was. That goes to show you how you could be more fit than you give yourself credit for which was totally my case. So then, I concluded "What the hell, enter a half marathon." Yesterday, I registered for the Kasier SF Half Marathon race.
On the Kaiser SF Half marathon site are some training modules, so I am going to use one of their programs. I'll be using the advanced program because I've already been running at the 21-25 mile per week level. My actual milage per week this month has been 25-32 miles. The training modules can be downloaded in Word files so I did that and modified the schedule a bit because their program is 12 weeks and the race is only 7-1/2 weeks away. Here's my training program. As a practice, I'm also running a 9 mi race on Jan. 6 at Lake Merced in SF, and I have scheduled coaching sessions with a marathon pro for guidance. Again, it's my belief that if you do anything physically challenging you should also be working with pros to help guide you. I already work closely with my naturopathic doctor for body issues.
I'll be blogging about the half marathon training. I'm very excited to have a new goal to work towards. If anyone wants to train along with me, please join in. The more the merrier!
