17 miles

“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

I told myself this at mile 14. It wasn’t encouraging to my aching body. Nevertheless, I completed 17 miles. I ran 5 of those miles, however, with a full bladder. Why? Because the first bathrooms that I pass on my run were locked. I have no idea why. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen them closed, and of course it was the first time I really had to use them. Thankfully, I made it to the second set of bathrooms, 5 miles later, without any accidents.

Including bathroom/drink breaks, my pace was pretty much exactly the same pace at which I ran my 14-mile-run. Although it’s nice to know I’m not slowing down as the miles keep building, I really would like to see myself getting faster. I’m praying that the cool weather coming this fall will somehow impact my pace, but I have a hard time trusting in temperature alone to get me across the finish line under 6 hours…

Dilemma. Yes, I can switch from the marathon to the half-marathon. And I don’t even have to decide until October. But, it makes sense (at least to me), that I should try to decide sooner, so I can train accordingly.

The Hammer HEED was great. Lemon-Lime tasted completely different from Gatorade’s Limon-Lime or Limon-Lime Sports Beans, but it seemed to do its job and definitly has a conservative amount of sweetness to it.

On a side note–school starts again Wednesday, and I move into the dorm on Saturday. Class work load might be the sole determinator of whether I drop down to the Half. School definitly should come first. Theoretically, I have time to both study and train. The one difficulty, though, is having the disipline to do both with 100% effort. But such is life, I suppose.

College.

Let’s see, where did I leave off? Yes, it has been awhile. I have moved, college has started, and I’m sorry to say that I haven’t accomplished any mileage goals since I moved into my dorm room.

But I did buy new shoes in July–a pair of Saucony ProGrid Guide. I also ran my farthest distance before school started–6.2 miles (10km). I accomplished my run at turtle pace, but I don’t care about that so much.

Currently, my goal is to just keep running. I don’t usually have a lot of time for long runs, and so my runs have just stayed in the 25-40 min. time range. My goal is still to run the Outer Banks Marathon in 2009. We’ll see if that happens…

Off we go: An introduction.

I’m not new to blogging. I read them, write them, comment on them, etc. I am, however, new to WordPress. In the past I used LiveJournal, Blogspot, Xanga… and of course networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. With LiveJournal still near and dear to my heart, I’m setting off on yet another, more formal, adventure with WordPress.

This is my official running blog. If anyone is interested, I also have a less formal running blog here, over at LiveJournal. WordPress seems a little up to my needs at this point, though.

Although I will primarily write about goals, workouts, mileage, running equipment wish lists, and other running related (RR) topics, I might also share bits and pieces of my life as they relate to running. We all need some drama every once in awhile.

I started running (or attempting to run) in the fall of 2005. I thought I would join Air Force ROTC to pay for college, and I needed to start working on the physical fitness requirements, which included running at a decent pace. Well, it happened that I didn’t need to apply for the ROTC scholarship, thankfully, but I’ve kept running off an on since then. Recently, this past January, I decided that if I was ever going to consider myself a “real” runner, I would need to commit more time a determination to running. And that’s what I’ve done so far. I start college next year. Keeping up with studying and running will be a big hurtle in itself. I also think I could someday run a marathon. I won’t be ready for it anytime soon. But someday.

So, if you’re still reading by this point, I hope you’ll stick with me in my journey, wherever it may lead me.