The Journey Begins

Hello world.

I'm going to be a dad pretty soon. Emotionally, I am ready and eager to experience everything fatherhood brings with it but my body is not on the same page. I want to be able to be a great parent to my child and I think I can be, but I think part of that involves being a role model for a healthy lifestyle. Currently, I could be the poster boy for a 'Cheetos' advertisement. It's hard to be a dad when you are dead from a fat heart.

So, like any good parent, I'm going to run from my problems. Literally. I want to run away from the unhealthy life style I have been living and begin laying the ground work from which my progeny will hopefully learn from. 

I've been running semi-regularly for the last four years and really took to it once I began. As a kid, I hated the idea of running. To me, running always seemed to mean running on a treadmill (which is truly miserable), and I'm not sure why. But once I really set my mind to running outdoors, a new love sparked. My parents have been avid runners my whole life, having completed many half marathons and marathons over their time. They ran outside, inside, whatever needed to be done to get their training in. My father even qualified and ran in the Boston Marathon, and last year they ran their first ultra-marathons for their birthdays. But for child-me, I was more interested in the world of Spyro the Dragon and trying to figure out how to best defeat Sephiroth. And hey, I liked my childhood a lot. It made me who I am today and helped make me the person I am. I love the life I have, I just don't want complacency to be a defining trait of who I am as a parent. 

It may have taken time for me to understand why my parents loved to do what they do, but now that I understand, I want to be able to pass that along to my children. I want them to be able to understand that it is important to take care of your self both mentally and physically, in what ever form that might take.

The quest I have laid out before myself: follow in my own father's footsteps and run in the Boston Marathon by the time I am 35 (9.5 years from writing this). Now, this is a big goal and will be a culmination of a lot of hard work but this blog is a starting place for all of it. I am writing this for people to read as a means of accountability. I need people out there that can check in on my progress, who can see what I am doing and make sure I am staying true to my goals (and maybe help my writing to improve as well).

As with any major quest, it helps to break it up into smaller, achievable goals. Currently, my ideas involve writing training updates, updates on races I plan on running, race reports, and goal (re)evaluations. I'll be making it up as I go sometimes and will always appreciate feedback and advice. And what better time to start than the present?

My first sub-goal set: 

Run the Monumental Half-Marathon

November 3rd, 2018, 8am

This gives me about 25 weeks of training time to get back into half-marathon shape. I am currently aiming for a 3:00 race time, a 13:45/mile race pace.

My current training program is utilizing the Couch to 5K running program to slowly warm back into running after the winter. I just finished the first of eight weeks. From there, I will spend about 5 weeks working on normalizing my mileage and on some speed-work before transition into a 12 week Half Marathon training program by Hal Higdon. This accounts for my 25 week window and, with hard work and determination, will guide me to my goal.

There we have it. My first steps into this journey of fatherhood and running from my problems. I hope some of you will be interested in the journey and will follow along with me! The accountability would be greatly appreciated and I'll do my best to be updating this blog regularly with information.

Let's run.