Well, its been an interesting week. I’ve always been a little skeptical of blogs, seeing them as nothing more than the expected evolution of the “My Favorite Links” type of homepage. Then I spent last weekend reading Hollie’s Marathon Training Log. And you know something? It was really pretty interesting.

Now, I’m training for the 2004 Motorola Marathon myself, you see. And I’m becoming more interested in fitness as time goes on. Who knows? Maybe someone else will find this as interesting as I found Hollie’s. And if not … well, it really doesn’t cost me anything more than a few minutes a day.

Let’s see - a little exposition would probably be welcome at this point. Back in August of 2001 I was in pretty sad shape, physically. I weighed in at 235 pounds, and probably couldn’t have ran a mile to save my life. Literally. I decided that I’d been a couch potato for too many years, and wanted to do something about it. First, I cut down my food intake drastically - regular lunches, but limiting dinner to about 400 calories (a standard serving of prepacked microwave food - hardly depriving myself).

Next, I started walking: first a little, but building up to a couple of hours every day in the evenings. That wasn’t that hard to do - I’d put on an audiobook or a DVD commentary and walk the loop between my living room and kitchen (a nice open floorplan). Weird? Possibly, but very effective. Between this and the dietary change, I was down to under 200 pounds by the end of the year!

Things progressed pretty slowly at that point. I bought a bike in Spring 2002, but didn’t really do much with it. Then in the fall, one of my good buds Marcus invited me to go trail riding with him and another friend of his, Bill. He was in pretty darn good shape, having completed the 2002 Motorola Marathon that year (his first). So, I got out on my bike, and hit the trails up at Walnut Creek. Damn near killed myself. Obviously, there was more to being fit than simply losing weight - besides, I was still 10 or 15 pounds over the top of the “healthy” weight for my height.

Over the next few months, I started riding more regularly and improving my overall cardio health - it wasn’t great, but I didn’t lag too far behind. I even attempted a few 5K races, but really wasn’t doing well (35 minute times). By mid 2003 I started riding a lot more, doing 75-100 miles a week down at the Veloway. This helped shed another 10 pounds pretty quickly (I was burning close to 6,000 calories a week in riding after all), but I wasn’t pushing it enough to make great gains elsewhere.

About 4 or 5 months ago, Marcus talked me into getting a Golds Gym membership and we started working out together once a week. Now I’m up to three times a week (when I can find the time), Monday and Wednesday with Jason and Friday with him and Marcus. I was pretty pathetic starting out - I don’t think I could press three sets of 20 pounds - but you have to start somewhere, right?

I should make a note of that right now - by 20 pounds I mean the bar with 20 pounds of weight on each side. Now, that’s still only 85 pounds, but I wasn’t that bad that I couldn’t do 20 by iteslf.

Fall rolled around - for non-Texans that means that the high temperature started to get under 100 - and I was feeling much better about my overall condition. Still, my endurance was pretty bad, and I really wanted to do something about it. I’ve never been much of a runner, and ever since my knee surgery back in early 1996 I’ve been very (overly?) careful about impacts to my knees. But I decided that I really wanted to take the next step in my conditioning.

So, I went to AustinFit and enrolled in their Marathon training program!

Yep. Here I was, unable to run 3 miles without damn near collapsing at the end, and I was planning on running 26.2. Am I nuts? That, I’ll leave for you to decide on your own. I was doing it though. On August 23rd, I did a 2 mile placement run to determine my pace. I ran it fairly hard (for me), and finished, panting, in 20:24. That put me squarely in the “Red” group, for 10-11 minute milers. Some paperwork and $85 later, and I was officially in training.

I’ll admit that it would have been nice had I started this back then. Well, I didn’t. I do have some entries from my running log which I’ll try to back-enter soon. But for now, I figure better late than never. I’m about halfway through the program - my longest run to date was 10.5 miles, and I have a 20K coming up in 8 days.

I’m in the best shape of my life, and its getting better every week. How much better? That depends on how far ahead you read, but right now I’m really looking forward to the Marathon - both for the sense of accomplishment that I know I’ll feel, and to find out just how much of a change I’ll have made to my body, mind, and spirit.

Running is fun - y’all should give it a go some time!

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