Ready to Blog

Hi everyone and welcome to my inaugural blog post. Let me lay out what this blog will be about and why I decided to blog about running.

Last January I decided to make a goal of running my first marathon. I'd been running on and off for years but had never been fully committed to it. Through a lot of time and effort I was able to finish the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon in on October. I certainly didn't set any records but it was a huge accomplishment for me.

At that point I felt like I had finally gotten a good groove going with my running. It felt great to complete a goal like that, and I wanted to continue. I signed up for the Phoenix Marathon on Jan 18th so I'd have another goal to keep me focused.

Unfortunately a combination of holiday travel, extremely cold weather and a nagging knee injury kept me from accomplishing that goal. Sadly since I ran the marathon I've gained around 20 pounds and lost much of my running stamina. I badly want to get back into shape because of the great feeling I get when I have a good run. I've never felt better in my life than when I crossed that finish line at the marathon.

So my goal in creating this blog is completely self serving. I want to blog about my workouts to get support from others and also to give me a little extra incentive to get out there and run. It's tougher to skip a workout when I know that everyone can see that I'm slacking.

Hopefully I can offer some items of interest, at least to other amateur runners like myself. There is a lot more to running than just going out there and doing it as many of you know well. I plan on talking about various running related topics along with my posts about my workouts.

So, please check back. I'll be posting an update at least every time I run. With that, here is today's workout:

I got out today for the first time in about a week. Last week we had record low temperatures and then I had my non-marathon-running trip to Phoenix where I continued to slack off. I went out at about 8:00 for a run around Lake Harriet. I forgot my GPS watch, but the run is about 3 miles.

My pace felt pretty good (which for me is under ten minute miles). Since it is much warmer than last week I felt like I could go without gloves. That was a big mistake. I ended up running with my hands in my pockets for part of the run. That threw me off a bit, but at least next time I'll know better.

My knee is still pretty achy, so 3 miles was probably about right. I'd love to run further, but I don't want to push it. I'm planning on running again Thursday so I'll post again then.