Running again

So. Haven't been here in a while! Looks like my last attempt to train for another race lasted all of one week. Heh. Well, here I go again! I did my first official mid-week run today, two miles around the house in 31:14 minutes. Averages out to just over 15.5 minutes per mile, pretty darn good time for my first timed run. Of course, I'll never be able to maintain that over a whole marathon or half marathon, but it means I have a chance of finishing, say, Long Beach, which has a time limit of 7.5 hours, or 17.17 minute miles.

I'm not sure yet which race I plan to train for, or even whether I'll go for a whole marathon or a half. But I've got plenty of time to train for Long Beach (Oct 11) or Las Vegas (Nov 15) or even Honolulu (Dec 13). Both Long Beach and Las Vegas have half marathons, which should be eminently doable.

I think I have a better chance of making it to a race this time—for one thing, I've lost a lot of weight since my last race, so I have a lot less bulk to carry around. In fact, I weigh about 10 pounds less now than I did for my very first marathon! I've been following a vegan meal plan for the last year and a half or so and feel pretty healthy these days. I supplement with protein drinks and my energy is good. I've been walking two miles a day for the last month and am already in fairly good shape.

The biggest hurdle is going to be getting through the heat of the summer with the long runs. The mid-week runs I'll be able to manage, they're only 30 minutes or so, and I can get up early and do them before the sun gets too hot. But the longer runs—even if I get up and out at first light, I'll still be running when the day starts to heat up. I'd have to start running at 2 AM to finish a marathon-length training run by 9 AM, and that's not going to happen. Even if I were willing to start running that early, I can't run in the dark—the roads are too rough, I wouldn't be able to see where I was going, I'd fall and hurt myself. I wonder if I could split my long runs in two? Three hours in the morning, then finish in the evening after the sun goes around the mountain. Hm. Well, I'll just have to see how it goes.

I'll have to credit my new iPhone with getting me out walking and running again! It has a step counter built in, so it's easy to keep track of how far I'm going each day. I joined a 100k Step Challenge for March—100,000 steps in 28 days, which averages out to just 3572 steps a day. I decided to go for 5000 steps a day, which I could easily do with 2 miles of walking added to my normal daily steps. Once I got walking two miles a day, it was easy enough to try running a bit in those miles. And my new iPhone also has a stopwatch and lap counter built in, so keeping track of time and distance is also easy. Now I'm looking at training apps—I will probably get Jeff Galloway's marathon training app, since I use his training method, and my iPhone will be with me every step of the way!