Happy to be training again.

I’M TRAINING FOR A MARATHON ….well actually a half marathon, but it’s so nice to hear those words again. Hard to believe it’s been almost 5 months since Ive done any serious distance walking . To be honest with you, since the Boston marathon back in April, I’ve been in such a rut with all my breathing problems, I wasn’t really sure if Id ever be able to do another race. The fact is, my lung function has declined to an all time low and my endurance level totally sucks . But setting aside my physical limitations and the training obstacles I’ll probably face, mentally, I feel more than ready to take on the challenge of a half marathon again.

For the next 5 weekends , if breathing well enough, I’ll be doing a series of long slow training walks beginning with an 8 miler this Saturday and culminating with a 12 miler sometime towards the end of Sept. In between the LSDs, I’m gonna try to increase the number of 5- mile baseline walks I do to 4 times a week. I hope to also do at least one 10 mile tempo walk sometime before the race. The race itself, happens on Oct 4th at the San Jose Rock&Roll half marathon

Theres no doubt that my disease is catching up with me, as I’m finding it harder and harder to maintain a non-racewalking pace any faster than 15 min/mile over the longer distances, but as long as there are walker friendly events out there that have at least a 3.5 hour time limit for the half marathon and 7.5 for the full marathon, you can pretty much bet I’ll be there doing what I do.