Running with new people

One of the things I really enjoy about running is the opportunity to meet new people from different walks of life. Today, I ran with 4 new guys on my lunch run today. One of them has an ongoing battle with asthma, has lost 40lbs, and is trying to stave off diabetes and heart disease from his family history. Hats off to him. I'm fortunate enough to never have dealt with health issues. I'm inspired by people that have battled obesity and other health debilities and continue to do so because they just don't want to live a healthy lifestyle.

One of my pet peeves about running in NYC...♦

is smoking. I was having a cool-down jog to my apartment, and about a 150 ft. from my apt. door were a couple of guys smoking some weed. When I got past that, some neighbors who were smoking about 25 ft away. I can't do anything about it except to hold my breath, but it just annoys me sometimes when I'm breathing hard and I get a huge intake of second hand smoke of something. That's what I get for training in the heart of the city.

Gripes aside, I decided to do a pace workout around the five mile loop of Central Park. I'm hoping to do a 7:28 pace to come in at about 3:15 to qualify for Boston, and I have to start feeling that pace. In the end, I was overeager and did a 7:06. Here's a link to my workout from my Garmin 405, which is the best recreational GPS device IMHO. But that's another post.

Lazy day

I've decided to take off today and make this a true easy week so I can allow my body to recover. It's said taht half the battle for marathon training is getting to the starting line healthy. Been battling sore lower calf muscles and newly sore heels the last four weeks, and also a tender achilles tendon. I spoke with a friend and she told me it might be achilles tendinitis. I've been ramping up my mileage the last month, so I think this rationalization is well deserved :-)

Just so I can post an image, here is my mileage for this month so far:

Hello World! Read about my trials as I try for the Boston Marathon!

Hello World is an apt intro today since I'm an application developer by profession, and all day long I've been trying to get my Hello World application to run with Flex and mx:RemoteObject. But this is not about programming.

I've been running since my then fiance suggested we do a triathlon to get in shape for our wedding. I begrudgingly obliged, and have found myself hooked to triathlons and now road races. More on that later. I found out about 3 years ago that I needed to run a specific time to qualify for the Boston Marathon, so I thought I'd give it a go. My qualifying time then was 3:10:00. It'll be 3:15:00 this year. Obviously I have not done it yet since I'm now blogging about this.

I'm blogging about this now so that I can look back at my efforts and laugh or even cry months or years down the road. I've had many ups, and more recently, downs when it comes to my running life, and I hope to relive them later. Along the way, I'd also love to hear other runner's experiences.