The Plan

I figured I should get my training plans posted before September is gone – and yikes! that’s today … although I feel pretty crappy (picked up some kind of cold:  nauseous, dizzy – vertigo, stuffed up, and the like) and don’t want to do much.  Although I was on my treadmill this morning as scheduled!

Anyway … I’m starting with 2 minutes walking/2 minutes running increasing by 10 minutes each week with every 4^th week being a step back (total amount of time per day) week.  Currently all this is taking place on my treadmill – with increases for speed occurring on the same week as the step back in total time.  My goal is to work up to 180 minutes before starting on a 16 week mileage plan as listed in “The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer”.  Most of this happens 3 days per week, with a 4^th day designated for outside walks (for the now, runs later) starting with one mile and eventually increasing into my long run days.

I am also cycling a couple of days per week and doing a little bit of weight training a couple days per week – low weights (pounds), higher reps.  Both of these are of course in the “building” (minutes cycled; weight and reps, etc.) process.  Does any of this make sense to anybody but me?  It looks great on my Excel grid, harder to translate into words.

So far, the most important thing I’ve started up again in my training has been my Bible reading plan – I don’t think I could even contemplate this type of an undertaking without that – it keeps me steady and tells me who I really am regardless of what anyone else says.  But I got to tell you this whole training business is hard.  Way worse than when I started training a few years ago.  My word of advice – if you’ve got some type of training plan started (food, exercise, Bible, prayer, whatever) keep it going; it’s much harder to start over.

“Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing. I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified.”    1 Corinthians 9:24-27 NLT

Lori <><

Sharing life ... sharing Christ

Confessions Of A Would-be Marathoner

We’ve (my husband, Dennis and myself) recently returned from our District Pastor’s Conference (which was really great by-the-way – some terrific reminders about GOD and HIS love for us – from a dynamic young speaker named Ben Stewart) at which I felt like giving up on this whole “marathon thing” before I’ve hardly begun.  It doesn’t take much for me to get discouraged and unfortunately, rude comments happen to be one of those things that really pull me down – sometimes for a very long time. 

What I can’t figure out is why people think you can’t hear them just because they turn away from you or happen to move a foot or so away … my theory (if you really want to know – and it’s my blog, so you do!), is I think they really want you to hear, they’re just not brave enough to say it to your face – not that I want that either.  Anyway … after mentioning my marathon training to a couple of people I heard a few snide comments that would have been better left unsaid on their part, and definitely unheard on mine:  “she’s never going to make it”; “has she looked in the mirror lately”; “like that’ll ever happen”; and so on.  All of which put a sort of “crushing blow” onto my easily defeated courage to carry on.

To that end however, I’ve decided to “confess” a few things about myself – not for excuse purposes, or because I enjoy the feeling of shame and humiliation – but because I want to lay it all on the line this time.  I’m 50 years old; 5’4” tall – more of course, with shoes ;) and I weigh 210 pounds.  Yes, you read that right, I said 210 pounds (and yes, I did weight that when I did the half-marathon; more actually).  This is not my heaviest, but I do hope (and pray) that I will never be this heavy again. 

Along with my training plan (see the next posting “The Plan”), I’m implementing an eating plan that focuses more on fresh vegetables and lean meats with little in the way of carbs (potatoes, pasta, bread, etc.) as they tend to inflame my joints and make me feel waayyy older than I really am.  So, as the time goes, I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on with the weight loss as well as the marathon training.  I’m looking to see the mileage go up as the weight goes down.  I don’t want to be 210 pounds … I want to be 26.2 miles.

Lori <><

Sharing life ... sharing Christ

The Tale of Woe

On July 8^th, 2012, I did the Missoula Half-Marathon (13.1 Miles) and finished – which was my only goal really.  There were over 6,000 entrants between the half and the full with about two-thirds of them being in the half – I finished in 1675^th place overall, and 155^th place in my age group (45-49) with a time of 3:39:34.  I had hoped to complete it between 3 and 4 hours and that is almost exactly what I did.

I had a pretty rough go.  On Saturday – the day before the race – I smashed my head and left leg getting into a car (think low overhead) and ended up on my butt with a pretty good head ache/neck ache/leg ache.  The day of the race I had to get up at 4:00 am – yes, I said a.m.! (I know … that’s practically a crime!)  Because of all the traffic, and Dennis and I were towing our camper with us, he basically had to kick me out of the truck to catch the bus to the race start.  Not how I wanted to begin – no water bottle, forgot to take my glasses off, and no prayer time. 

So now I’m at the start – keep in mind there is over 3,000 people at the start with me – and I’m just waiting for the gun to go off; not thinking about WHERE I was waiting.  So, I’m probably not more than 50 feet from the actual start line when the cannon booms, at which point I am swept along in a tide of people who are running up the hill at a much faster pace than I have ever run (and which many of you know in the last few weeks of training I wasn’t even running because I had a broken toe – mostly walking [and planned to mostly walk the race]) and generally feeling like I’m on my last leg ... literally!  By the time I got to mile marker 1, I wasn’t even sure I was going to go on; I was that discouraged by the whole process.

Then I started thinking about all the time I had put in and what I really wanted to happen.  What is that line from “The Outlaw Josey Wales” spoken by the Indian Chief (Chief Dan George):  “we must endeavor to persevere”.  So I did.  By mile 4, I was on a steady roll (16 minute/mile pace +/-) and kept that up until the last mile – which is by far the hardest, and seemed like forever. 

Dennis was waiting for me at the finish line and that was fantastic; I’ve never had someone waiting (or cheering for me) at any kind of event I’ve ever done.  After escaping the athletes’ fence – yes they had us fenced in – we walked several blocks to our pickup and off we went to continue our camping vacation.  I was tired, but generally feeling pretty good; just needed some food and rest. 

As per some recommendation, I drank some chocolate milk and ate a Clif Bar to revive myself; which was a terrible mistake.  About an hour later I was down for the count – making Dennis stop along the road so I could throw up; not a pretty sight.  Thought that was done and over with, we went on our way and within another hour I started feeling really dizzy and Dennis again stopped the truck, this time when I got out, I passed out.  Woke up on the ground wondering how on earth I got there.  Weird!

Now it’s been a couple of days and I’m a lot better.  Was pretty sore on Monday, stiff on Tuesday, and thinking I might make it today.  Just imagine how bad it could have been if some of you hadn’t been praying for me!  All in all, I would do it again. Stay cool …

Lori <><

Sharing life ... sharing Christ