Not Day One

Part of the reason I'm keeping this blog is accountability.  The key to successful running is consistency.  And a good pair of shoes, but I already have those.  Consistency is what makes your training work.  Consistency is what will get you across the finish line feeling only a little bit like death.  And how do you stay consistent?  You tell everybody in the world what you're doing so that the threat of shame at telling them you haven't done your run for today, or that you don't think you're going to be trained enough to run the marathon, keeps you going and keeps you consistent.

Use your friends like cattle prods to keep you moving.  Some people might look at this same scenario and say that they are using their friends as encouragement.  Like promising yourself that you'll buy a new running outfit after one month of not missing a run.  Hell with that, I'll just go out and buy the damn outfit now.  I'm not good at delayed gratification.  But the threat of failure?  The threat of having everyone know you failed?  That will get my ass out of bed and on the road running any day of the week.  Unless it's snowing.  I don't run in snow.

Either way, by reading this blog you are implicitly agreeing to allow me to use you as a type of negative reinforcement to keep me running and make my training work.  It's a beautiful relationship, and I hope it works out for us all.


This isn't day one of my training plan.  I don't think it's technically day one of this blog, either, since I created the darn thing about a month ago and just never posted until now.   Yesterday was National Running day, which was neither the day of my first blog post nor a running day.  Interesting.

Today I ran 3.01 miles in 34 min 30 sec.  That is both slow and fast.  It's slow compared to most people who run marathons.  It's fast for me, because it means I'm running my miles in less than 12 minutes apiece.  It's a mixed bag, but I'll take it.

My goal for this year is to run the Chicago Marathon.  Well, first I'm going to get married.  The Marathon is the weekend after.  Because it seems like a good idea to get married one weekend and then run a marathon the next.

I don't do things on a small scale.  I started running so I could run marathons.  Hopefully, Chicago will be another notch on my belt and the first in a consistent series of marathons, maybe one or two a year from now on.  That would be pretty awesome.

Then again, I first need to get a handle on that consistency thing.  

Here goes...