Wishing Everyone a Happy Jewish New Year
I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Jewish New Year, may you have a sweet new year. The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah comes at a fortuitous time in my health and well being cycle. Since the summer has ended, I’ve gone from playing basketball 4X a week to being a lump. It’s time for me to address the situation, and make some New Year’s resolutions, and get back to being the person I’d like to be.
I have a lofty goal for the coming year: May 24, 2008, 34 weeks from now I will run in the Vermont City Marathon. My goal is to run a sub 3:30 marathon, which would qualify me for the 2010 Boston marathon. I would love to be at the starting line for Boston as a 50 year old. That is my goal, the following is my plan to attain that goal.
I have let my weight increase to 195. This is still 20 pounds lighter than I was a year ago at this time, but 10 pounds heavier than I was 4 months ago. I need to be more mindful of what I eat, and how much. I hope to lose 5 pounds by the end of October, and then let my body find a good training weight after that. For my non running training, I need to focus on the core, mixing up bosu ball and stability ball home workouts, getting in a regular routine of 4-5 workouts at home weekly.
Another routine that is essential for my success is getting enough rest. No more excuses, and squandered evenings in front of the computer or TV. I need to get to bed consistently at 10:00 PM, so that I can get at least 7 hours of sleep nightly.
Most importantly is that ignoring my early morning A.M. alarm is no longer an option. I need to get out there and get back to my predawn road warrior self. I really miss the inner peace that I get for a run on the open road. Between now and January 1st I will focus on trying to improve my 5K time. My 5K PR is 24:08. According to my running book, someone who is hoping to run a 3:30 marathon should be able to run a sub 21:50 5K. I can race in 4 locally: October 5th, October 25th, November 27th, and January 1st.
Training between now and then will consist of base runs of between 4&1/3 miles and 7.4 miles, with a goal of lowering my base pace to 8:30 miles. In addition I will incorporate a weekly hill run, a weekly speed interval/fartlek run, and a weekly 10 mile long run. My long run goal by January 1st is to complete my long run in under 85 minutes.
Again I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. May we work on improving ourselves and our world. May we find happiness and joy in ourselves and each other. May we build a peace that can refresh us, rejuvenate us, and allow us to accomplish great things. Shana tova umetukah.
September 29, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Happy New Year to YOU!!!
What a great blog!!
I’t great to hear of your comeback!! I can almost hear the enthusiasm in your words!!!
Sleep, that is the hard one, huh?? And boy is it so easy NOT to get up early when it is soooo dark now!!
BUT, I know you can do these goals! You’ve done them before. I remember last winter you were running in arctic freezing temperatures at the pre-crack of dawn!!
I need to set some similar guidelines, hmmmm….Shana tova umetukah!!!!
September 29, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Happy New Year to you as well!
That’s a great goal, and you’ve given yourself a lot of time to prepare for it. 34 weeks is plenty of time to build up a really strong running foundation, and then to work on aerobic ability and stamina.
Be careful about goal setting. You’re trying to improve your PR by, if I recall, over 40 minutes. That’s a lot. According to the run calculators I’ve looked at, with my 5K PR of about 20 minutes I should be able to run a 3:12 marathon, but that sounds really ambitious to me. Since I haven’t done it before, I’m shooting for 3:15 to 3:20 or thereabouts for my December 7 marathon. Of course that’s only 10 weeks away. I recommend getting a couple of short races in early so you can gauge your current fitness level — running a 5K is a good idea.
I look forward to following your blog about it. Good luck!