Last fall I set out to run at least two marathons and do another half marathon before December 2009 arrived.
That turned out to be an overly lofty goal.
Slow training through the winter relegated me to the half marathon in Eugene in May. A series of personal life hiccups derailed my training through the summer months, [...]
Under normal circumstances, I would have worked out last Monday. I would’ve gone for a short run and repeated the routine on Tuesday, stiff and sore muscles notwithstanding after completing the Eugene Half-Marathon.
That’s the routine I’ve followed in the past after completing full marathons.
But circumstances weren’t normal. I dealt with more fatigue from the Eugene [...]
Watching my son skid across the floor for the fifth, sixth, seventh…even 10th time I was wondering what he was enjoying more: playing basketball or falling down.
Saturday marked the end of Howie’s formal introduction to the game. For almost 30 minutes the 13 boys and girls on hand ran up and down the court trying [...]
Do not take my success as a roadmap to running a half-marathon.
Yes, I succeeded in finishing the Eugene Half-Marathon Sunday, finishing in an acceptable two hours, four minutes and 26 seconds. I’m happy with that, knowing where my training was at going into the race.
I managed to finish the half-marathon before the marathon winner crossed [...]
Not even 12 hours remain before the start of the Eugene Marathon as I write this.
It’s a moment of truth. I don’t feel ready for the race, and I’m doing the half-marathon rather than the full I set out to do. It’s disappointing, but honest.
My training hasn’t been consistent enough and the person responsible for [...]
I have this picture of my son, taken with a cellphone camera, charging a little portable basketball standard and rim with a ball held over his head. He’s still wearing his coat, have dashed off to get the ball the moment we got home from the store with the hoop.
He was a child possessed with [...]
A month from now, the first race of my personal challenge begins at Hayward Field in Eugene. It happens to end there, too.
I’ve been faced with adjusting my goals and coming to decision on how to approach the Eugene Marathon has been a part of that adjustment.
Trying a low-impact approach to training has worked, for [...]
When you’re training for a marathon you spend a lot of time alone. You also, normally, cover a lot of ground and see a lot of different terrain because few marathons are held on tracks or treadmills.
Oh, there’s time spent on the track if you’re doing speed work and treadmills are great when the mind [...]
After spending so much time on elliptical machines recently, largely because my old running shoes were more shocking than shock-resistant after far too many miles, the need to actually pound out some miles has been growing at an exponential rate.
Picking out a new pair of shoes last weekend makes that possible.
With several years of running [...]
Wednesday was a good day and it ended even better.
Throughout this training process I have had certain personal benchmarks in mind. After Wednesday’s workout, I had achieved a big one, a few days early.
After my daughter was born, my workouts became very irregular and I reverted to a couple poor eating habits. The result was [...]
