Heading for Iowa

After some prodding, I did decide to go ahead and run another marathon.  I really thought I would be finished from that distance after trudging through my first one in Orlando in January, yet here I am two weeks into the newest cycle of training, hoping to greatly improve my time from that January race.  Why did I decide to give it another go?  It's just one of those things, I suppose.  Sparky kept saying to get ready for another one, so when Des Moines in October was presented, for some reason I couldn't say no.

Now that I've basically invested 27 straight months into learning to run, losing weight, keeping that weight off, and giving all I've got to try to improve and get faster (who would have known I'd turn hyper competitive?), I've realized I need to change up my approach for Des Moines.  First off, I'm going to grow a mustache while training.  Second, I'm going to not focus so much on time, and focus more on sound mechanics, running easy, running to stay healthy, and building up a better aerobic foundation.  The biggest gains I am going to make at this stage is in being able to sustain long runs better, and not have the big crash at the end that is probably somewhat inevitable, but, at the same time, is probably more manageable than I'm giving it credit for being.

I want to improve a substantial amount in this race, honestly.  I've given myself a goal time of 4 hours.  I'm going to have to make sure I am consistent in training, not missing runs with injury, and generally taking care of myself.  I've yet to determine why I consider this so important, but I'm just going with it.  I mean, if I ultimately want to run the Boston Marathon, I've got to start knocking down faster miles, right?  Thanks for reading, and until next time...later.