Everyone should have goals.

I started this blog several years ago in an attempt to chronicle my efforts at running the Marine Corps Marathon. What I found out was that training for a marathon is hard, maybe even harder than the race itself, though I wouldn't know since I have yet to complete the 26.2 miles. Depending on one's pace, at the height of the training program, one could spend seven or more hours a week pounding the pavement. If you have a full-time job and a couple of side jobs, running for the equivalent of a workday can be a little hard to accommodate.

Training time for the half marathon is much shorter, the longest runs are around 10 miles, which is eight-plus miles less than most marathon plans' longer runs. At nine minutes a mile, that's only 90 minutes of running, plus cooldown. Doable.

From what I've read, just the physical toll that the marathon takes on a body is another reason to pick a shorter distance. If the marathoner is walking a little slower and missing a couple of toenails, the half-marathoner, by comparison, is kicking up his heels, ready to go out dancing.

So, I am changing my goal to the half. I was signed up for the Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon, but it's a spring race and I hadn't been training during the winter, which is an absolute necessity. I'll focus on building up my distance and strength over the summer, and maybe pick a 13.1 miler in the fall, and combine that with a couple days away with my wife.

Of course, I'm not doing this just to run a half marathon. The overarching goal is weight loss

In a nod that being over-40 means I'm not as flexible as I was in my 20s or 30s, I am also exploring other ways to get in shape. Never a gym rat, I'm not a fan of the lift-things-up-and-put-them-down way of exercising. It works for other people, just not me. What has piqued my curiosity is the disciplines that focus on strength and flexibility, and yoga seems to offer both. I have picked up a copy of Sage Rountree's The Runner's Guide to Yoga. A friend of mine, also a firefighter and an avid runner, says it helped him with flexibility and balance while running.

In the days ahead, I'll try and post every run, on the same day if possible. I welcome any comments and helpful hints, particularly on what apps and training gear people use. I'm always on the lookout for better ways to do things.

Back at it...Again

It seems a bit like Groundhog Day, but once again I'm trying to get back into a regular routine of running. Only this time, I've actually gotten out there, four times in the past week.

It hasn't been much, a mile and three-quarters in the longest one. And it hasn't been easy, which makes me a bit wistful of the way I was running last summer, a time when five-miles was a breeze. Of course, I realize that getting out there regularly will eventually get me back to that point, but in the interests of instant gratification...I want to be there now. (In a small indication that I'm progressing, I have lowered my average pace on the 1.25 mile course by 40 seconds or so, from 10'34" to 9'51". It didn't feel that way, though.)

At the moment, I'm concentrating on running just in the local neighborhood, either Old Freehold Road through the Walnut Street School yard, then Walnut Street back to OFR, or up to the High School and back. The weather has been largely cooperative, but we are getting towards the winter months, so I'd like to establish a regular routine before then, because I'm not going to be wanting to get out there when the temperatures are at freezing or below if I haven't.

I'm aiming for a near-term goal of five miles per run, which I should get to by December 1st if I keep this up. Last year, while training for the marathon I didn't run (yet...someday I will, when I can devote four hours on a Saturday to training), I found out about the Manasquan Reservoir, which has a beautiful 5-mile perimeter course around the water. Now, if one could only do it without the assorted other walkers, runners, and bicyclists, it would be perfect. In late spring, I'm going to try again for the Historic Half Marathon, and by try, I mean run the whole thing.

I'm still using Nike+, which seems to be pretty accurate. I've thought about trying one of the other apps, such as RunKeeper, but if it works, why change it. My Nike-sponsored cheerleaders for the first couple of runs have either been Shalane Flanagan or Sanya Richards-Ross.

For a little bit different take on things, check out my friend Roseanne Rappoccio's blog. She's a fellow never-was-a-runner, and has really gotten into it. She says she still doesn't like it, but I'm not quite sure I believe her.

Finally, I've changed up my playlist, too, trying to get a fresh start.

First five songs, old and new playlists:

·         “Armageddon It”, Def Leppard	·         “Out of Our Heads”, Dropkick Murphys
·         “Already Gone”, The Eagles	·         “Sing the Changes”, The Fireman
·         “I Want It All”, Queen	·         “Danger Zone”, Kenny Loggins
·         “She’s A Rebel”, Green Day	·         "If I Should Fall From Grace With God”, The Pogues
·         “Back In The Saddle”, Aerosmith	·         “We Didn’t Start The Fire”, Billy Joel

Baby Steps.

It's been several months, but I finally got out there. Just 1.3-and-change miles (a far cry from the five or six miles I did with ease just a year ago) and it was tough. And in a summer of moderate temperatures and low humidity, I pick the muggiest morning in weeks to go out.

Still, it was something. Now, the challenge is to turn this something into more somethings, at least a couple times per week.

I have a couple of motivations for doing this.

The first, and foremost, is to be healthy. When I was running last summer, I was in the best shape in years, and likely my life. My resting heart rate was in the mid-60s (unheard of for me before then), and my weight got as low as 189 pounds, where I hadn't been since high school. Predictably, a lot of the clothing and uniforms I had either didn't fit well, or actually fit better, though more (much more) the former than the latter. I actually downsized my turnout gear in the firehouse.

Now, I'm back up to 207 pounds (still a lot lower than the 244 I was sworn in at nine-plus years ago), and items that fit much better are getting a little - in some cases more than a little - tight again. I've reached the comfort limit of my turnout gear, and there isn't really an option to upsize the gear again, especially since the fire department is about to put seven new members through the academy, and they'll be taking the spare gear.

I have a goal of running the entire Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon. I've done the race once, but only ran about half of it, with not a lot of training. I want to do the whole thing, and the goal for that is next May.

Another reason is to make studying easier. I'm doing a lot of reading and note-taking in preparation for the Captain's test, tentatively scheduled for mid-November. I'm hoping that by getting in shape now, I'll study better. After all, just about every study out there says your brain functions better when the rest of the body does.

And finally, I'm no spring chicken. Everything hurts a little bit each day, some more than others, and it will only get worse. I don't want to put myself in a position to be hurt at work because I pre-hurt myself by letting things go. Getting into shape, and maybe doing a bit of yoga here or there, might help to forestall that.

http://t.co/9EeTZYabOQ. Sanya Richards-Ross was my post-run motivator.

Then Again, Maybe Not.

This wasn't, exactly, the post I had hoped to write after the Marine Corps Marathon. I thought it would go something along the lines of my finishing time, the experience around the event itself, maybe include a couple of pictures I had taken along the route. Perhaps include a list of damaged body parts that every long distance runner at times has to contend with. (Let's just say that Vaseline and/or bandaids are a handy tool to have.)

Instead, my line of thinking lately has been taking one of two paths: either "Making progress! Last year I signed up, this year I signed up and trained, next year I'm gonna sign up, train, AND run it!" or "maybe the half-marathon is more my speed." It can vary from hour-to-hour.

Among other things, it came down to $10. I'm not kidding. After getting back from vacation in the Outer Banks at the end of September, I had one shift at one of the side jobs, and the take-home (after taxes and paying a pension loan) was a little over $10. Like everybody else, I've got certain bills that have to be paid, and a $200-400 weekend in Washington, DC, wasn't going to improve that balance sheet, and in fact, exacerbate it. And that's after figuring in that we weren't staying in a hotel, but rather with friends from my wife's high school days, and whom I worked with way back in the day. The hotel would have been another $350.

One of the ironies of training for a marathon is that you really need to have time to devote to proper training for the race, which doesn't leave you a lot of time to work to pay your bills. In the latter half of the schedule, when long runs were in the 14-18 mile range, that's 3 to 4 hours of running. Unless I really wanted to get up at 1 in the morning before work, or be out til 1 in the morning after work (and after sitting in a car for an hour or so each way, and 12 hour shifts in between), I made sure to take at least one day off each weekend for those runs. Unfortunately, the way EMS schedules work, folks like to be off on the weekends to spend with their families, so per-diems work a lot of weekend shifts.

Cutting out 50% of your potential opportunities to work is no way to make sure those bills are paid.

I'd be lying if I said that the training didn't start to suffer long before the marathon, though. Something was always getting in the way. Soccer, school events, work. In my increasingly undisciplined mind, it was getting easier and easier to justify cutting short a long run here, or skipping a short run there. The end result was that I had run just 15 miles in October, and none after the second week.

A couple other small issues popped up that had to be taken care of which, if they had happened without the other stuff, would not have been a problem, but in the end just made the decision to skip the MCM that much easier.

There have been upsides to the training, which a couple of people, including one of the Marathon Jims, had pointed out, and is that the training is never "for nothing". I'm down to a couple pounds over what has been my lowest weight in probably 25 years, and I now know that I can run at least three miles non-stop, at a pace of around 8 minutes and change per mile, without killing myself (well, maybe not in the last month, but I did, and can get back there again). I've learned to run without music in my ears, since over those longer runs the battery on my (former) iPhone 4 didn't hold up to simultaneous use of the GPS and iPod functions for more than two or three hours. (Though I do wonder how much better those longer long runs would have been, since running for that long is dreadfully boring.) And without music, you are left to your own thoughts, which admittedly I can't say that I have much opportunity otherwise to just think.

And perhaps the most heartening of all is that my nine-year-old asked my wife the other day how old you had to be to run in a marathon. Maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree after all, and I have a future running partner in the family.

So, what to do now? Well, the other day, a colleague of mine from UH-EMS had told me that several members of NorthSTAR were planning a group entry in to the New Jersey Half Marathon in Long Branch, NJ in April 2014, and would I like to join them. Having actually completed the Historic Half this year, and the training for a half marathon is much simpler than for the full, I'm inclined to say yes.

As to a full marathon, like I mentioned before, I'm of two minds. Lately, it's been all half-marathon, all the time...but then I was watching coverage of the NYC Marathon this morning and started to think, "well...." If I do register for the marathon, it'd likely be for the fall (since I have to work - a lot - over the next few months to pay some bills, and we know where that leads), and I'd like another shot at the MCM. Given the popularity of the MCM, I'd have to run in the Spring race, the 17.75K, in mid-April to get an automatic qualifier. On the other hand, that's a lot of running in a month and a half, between the 17.75K, the Long Branch Half, and the Historic Half, which I'm likely going to do again.

Decisions, decisions....

Finally, thanks to all who have offered words of support, encouragement, or just plan "just do it." They were all appreciated, and in each way helped me a little farther along. I'm going to keep contributing to this blog, posting updates on what I'm doing, and how I'm doing it, if for no other reason than to get the jumble of thoughts in my head out in the open, so everybody can see just how disorganized my brain is at times.

Week Five - Day Three, Saturday, August 17th

I woke up on Thursday morning, the 15th and my left hip flexor - actually, my whole left leg - was absolutely killing me.  Didn't see much point in going out for the short run and putting it completely out of its misery, and me out of the Marathon. Two days and a significant amount of ibuprofen later, and it felt much better that I decided to tackle my next long run of 10 miles. Good decision on my part, if I do say so myself.

Changed up the course quite a bit. Instead of doing the serpentine course through local streets, which was getting pretty boring (and increasingly difficult to remember where I had to turn at what time), my wife suggested a longer, straighter run, one that she had done while getting ready for the Jersey Girl Triathlon. This one took my straight up OFR past the split with New Hampshire, to Church Road, then over to Todd Road, which brought me back to OFR. Down to Whitty Road, then North Bay to Bey Lea, through the campus of High School North, and back on OFR again. Took a side trip down Lilac, which is familiar territory, to Mapletree, then OFR to home. Nice and simple.

I must say, it has it all: wide shoulders in most places, narrow shoulders in a few areas, no shoulder at all in a couple of spots, which made for a couple of death-defying interactions with the motoring public. Passed lots of houses of worship, which you don't really notice all the time when you're in a car, starting with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, right across Intermediate North Way from the Ocean County Baptist Church. Then right before you get to the Parkway overpass, is Congregation B'Nai Israel, a Conservative congregation. Across the street is, I believe, their former temple, now occupied by Messiah Bible Church at the corner of Whitty Road.

On the other side of the Parkway is the Church of Grace and Peace, one of the larger churches in Toms River. (If you need a cop outside to direct traffic when services get out, you have a large church.) Up a little farther, after the split with New Hampshire, is St. Luke's Roman Catholic Church, which is the parish we thought we were going to attend when we moved to Toms River. (But no! Did you know that you are supposed to go to the parish in your specific geographic area? Neither did we. Instead we go to St. Joe's across town. But that's another hyperlink altogether.)

Making the turn onto Church Road (appropriately named for all the houses of worship that are located along it), I crossed New Hampshire, and passed St. Andrew's United Methodist Church, then hung the right onto Todd Road, with it's impressive selection of McMansions. Back down OFR, passing Grace and Peace again, to Whitty Road. That was not a good idea, since it was getting dark, and the construction made for some interesting moments with cars. Getting to the corner of North Bay, across from the Toms River Veterans Recreation Complex (built on the site of what was the last poultry farm in Toms River) is Trinity Fellowship Church.

What struck me about almost all of these houses of worship is that they all look like they went to the same architect when designing their buildings...very modern, with soaring roofs differing only in where they placed the cross, except the Mormons, who don't put crosses on their buildings. The only exceptions were St. Andrew's, which is a bit older, and Congregation B'Nai Israel, which looks a lot like other temples of their size: brick building, very simple.

For this run, I borrowed the belt that Kim bought before the Historic Half last year. Had space for two small water bottles, and a small pouch, into which I put a copy of my license and a small packet of "Extreme Sport Beans", made by Jelly Belly, which promises "quick energy for sports performance", and contains "carbs, electrolytes, and vitamins B & C." All I know is that they tasted good and seemed to work. During almost all my breaks, except for the first one, I made sure to have a couple of sips of water, and I had a portion of the beans every half hour.

Except for the hip flexor, which actually didn't bother me til about mile four or five, this was a pretty good run, much better than last week. Low humidity, and a slight breeze. I hope next week's run of 11 miles is just as good. But it's still August.

Today's Nike Pep-talker was Ellie Goulding, who congratulated me on doing more miles this week than last.

What Training App to Use?

In yesterday's post, I displayed some of the stats from my run last night. I'd like to display an actual map of the course, as well as more comprehensive numbers, but unless the reader is a subscriber to Nike+, and also a "friend" of mine on there, they aren't going to be able to see it for themselves. It does display to Facebook, which I could probably link to from here, since most people who'd read this here are going to be my friends there, anyway. That would take care of the map, but not much in the way of stats.

Several of my friends are using MapMyFitness, and still others are on RunKeeper. I'd like to pick one app that would work well, instead of spending the first minute of any run starting three different timers, which will skew the numbers (four if you include the Garmin watch Kim gave me for Christmas).

My cousin Rose's husband Jay pointed me in the direction of linking the MapMyFitness app to the Nike+ one, but if you click on an individual run on the MMF site, it doesn't seem to load the individual run's information correctly. Or maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

Also, does any one app seem to work better than another, as far as accuracy? So far, Nike and the Garmin watch can have as much as half a mile and 30 seconds in pace difference over the three, though both use GPS technology. Nike also said I did 14.1 miles in the Marine Corps' Historic Half Marathon, which would probably be news to the race organizers, I would think.

Suggestions are welcome.

Update, July 17th: I've found that if I go to my Twitter feed, where I also share my runs, I can find the link to a specific run there. So for now, the plan is to copy-and-paste the link and repost it here. 

What Have I Gotten Into?

My legs have finally stopped screaming.

They started complaining loudly Sunday morning, in response to the 6.2 miles I did on Saturday, when we "ran" the Irish Sprint 10K, an event that is part of the Marine Corps Marathon series. (I say "ran" only because we actually traveled with both feet off the ground at any given time for perhaps a mile of the total.) What made the course more difficult was not only the hills, including one that was like climbing a ladder after the finish, but at least half if it was off-road.

The objective for this race was to finish in less than one hour and 50 minutes, that being the limit to get the "Golden Ticket" (think Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) required to enter the Marine Corps Marathon without having to attempt to enter the race on registration day…which filled up in about three hours.  We did it in about one hour and 37 minutes.

Irish Sprint 10K Warrior Chip

Yes, we entered the Marathon.  Call us crazy.

Actually, it's probably not as crazy as one might think, since the MCM website says that half of the 30,000-runner field comprises of first time marathoners (and with good reason - very few hills beyond the first mile or two, and you can't beat the views of lots of icons of American history).  Though it doesn't say anything about first time runners.

Since I have to start somewhere - Kim has a little bit of a head start on me, having done the Diva Half Marathon last October, as well as assorted smaller races - I also entered the Semper Fred 5K, which is run on the same day as the Historic Half, another in the MCM series.  Kim is entered in that one, too.

If there is anyone out there willing to impart some advice, I'm all ears.  I've already been in touch with my cousin Rose's husband Jay, who did the ING New York City Marathon for the first time (also as a first-time marathoner) last November to get his thoughts on the whole process.

What is just a little daunting, not being a runner, is the prospect of four hours of running.  Working for four hours can be a stretch, to say nothing of running the equivalent of the Garden State Parkway from Seaside to Red Bank.  So, just to be safe, I set my maximum time to seven hours.

 I hope I don't need the whole time.