I love running for the same reason I love skateboarding and biking. There’s something about being in the street, connected to the concrete, unprotected that feels like home to me. Houses, cars, and belongings are nice and all, but I love escaping them and just being human alone in the big scary world. It does feel like we were built/born to run/move but we spend our days sitting instead. Wack sabbath.
Also, I love the consistency of it. Life is crazy. What would you do if your world changed overnight? My answer is simple: I’d get up and run, just like I did today.
I’m training for the LA Marathon. Though I’ve been running pretty consistently since my youngest daughter was born five years ago I haven’t run a marathon since my first in 2002. I’ve really enjoyed just running, building a base, then training for 5 and 10Ks using Daniel’s Running Formula. Running the shorter runs fit my available time much better and the “quality runs” not only mix things up but help you notice the little improvements. Improving is fun. I’ve been digging running more than skateboarding recently for exactly that reason: I’m getting better at it. I’ve been getting steadily WORSE at skateboarding for, oh, about 20 years so it feels AWESUM to be improving at something.
It was the Pablove fundraiser that kicked me into gear for this year’s LA Marathon. Thanks to David, Kether, and Charlene for being the first donors to my training page. And you, dear reader, I’d really appreciate it if you could pop on over there and contribute a little something. Pablove does great work and is worth your charity and generosity.
If you’d like to run the LA Marathon yourself it’s not too late! We’re 17 weeks out from the marathon now and RunKeeper has great 16 week programs that will help you finish with relative ease. Just sign up for one of the programs that starts on November 27th and you’ll be good to go.
I’ve been meaning to write an article about all the gear I’ve been nerding out on (Garmin+RunKeeper, Fitbit, Withings scale, etc) but haven’t had time yet. Hopefully soon! If you have any questions about running, marathon training, or anything at all just ask in the comments and I’ll try to pull a post together in response. I’ll try to blog regularly about the training process.
First week was easy given my current base. I’m using one of the Hal Higdon programs which specifies: Monday and Wednesday are shorter recovery runs, Tuesday is a longer mid-week run, Thursday is a quality workout (speed or hill training), Saturday is a mid-length run at marathon pace, and Sunday is the long run. Friday is the only non-running day. Last week I put in 33.1 miles over about 4 hours and 42 minutes, according to RunKeeper. You can follow along with my training via RunKeeper here.
In bigger news, I started eating a little meat after more than 20 years as a non-meat-eater. I started with turkey and have had chicken twice since. Why? I am pretty sure our bodies were made to process mostly vegetables and fruit along with some lean protein. Meat isn’t the enemy, processed sugars and grains are. Dairy isn’t really needed, either, but I’m keeping that around in small doses. My goal at the moment is to cut out alcohol and processed sugars and grains for the most part, aiming to get most of my carbs (needed for the running regimen) from fruits and veggies. Curious how I feel after a few weeks on this plan while cranking up the mileage and still keeping up with my regular weight-lifting workout. The meat eating isn’t really coming easily. It’s been so long it just doesn’t look appetizing and feels pretty strange. I’ve only managed it three times in the past two weeks. It didn’t upset my stomach or anything, though.
I’ve been pushing my now-five year-old in the stroller since she was five months old. She’s patient, even on the long runs, though in the past we’ve topped out at twelve miles. We’ll see how she’ll tolerate all the way up to 18 as part of this training program. She’s anxious to run herself. After seeing the kids race at the Santa Monica 5000 she asked when she gets to run. So I signed her up for the kids half-miler at the Long Beach Turkey Trot on Thursday (thanks to fellow runner Bret Banta for the tip). She’ll run her half-miler at 9am then I’ll push her in the stroller for the 5K at 10am. Should be fun. Wanna come? Also, Nicole, Miranda, and I are going to hit the Wobble Gobble 5K in Santa Monica on Saturday. Come on down and run that one with us, too, if you’re so-inclined.
Happy running,
ian