Back to Basics

It's been awhile since we've talked, you and I.  As you probably figured out, my marathon training is not going according to plan.  I've officially cancelled my plans to run the marathon at the end of this month.  There are a multitude of reasons why this happened, and also why it took me so long to write this post, but the most important ones are:

• The weight I gained prior to the start of my marathon training impacted me way more than I expected.  My long runs were painful - both during and for days after
• I really underestimated the level of commitment needed to do this training.  I knew it would be more difficult than the half-marathon, but it really was a much bigger leap than I anticipated
• We lost one of our dogs about a month ago.  This didn't directly impact my decision to stop the training (since I had already put it on pause) but it did directly impact how long it took me to get back on track

So - what's the plan now?  I still want to do a marathon, but I'm going to be more realistic about my goals.  I need to get to a base level of fitness before I try something like that again.

I'm not a big fan of new years resolutions, but I AM a fan of setting concrete, achievable goals - and also differentiating between goals and the plan to achieve those goals.  So, here we go:

Goals for 2015

• Lose 30 lbs
• PR a 5K
• PR a 10K
• PR a Half Marathon

Plan

• Go to the gym at least 5 days a week
• Take weekly measurements and record them (weight, inches, etc)
• Blog once per week
• Nutrition (more on this in a future blog post)

I'm undecided if I'll post the measurements I take here - I might - but at the very least I want to use this as a way to record how things are going.  Also, the plan to achieve these goals will get more detail as the year goes on.  For example, at some point I'll pick out the races I'll be doing and I'll have specific plans for those races.

Anyways - I'm glad to be back here, even if it did really suck to have to write this post.  But I'm committed to making this work and that's what is going to happen.

-John