Go Big or Go Home

I didn’t look this happy when I ran a marathon (Photo Credit: flickr.com/nordearigamarathon/)

The crowning achievement of my athletic life was the 2008 Austin Marathon. Ran (more or less) 26.2 miles. If you’ve met me in person, I would be the last person you’d expect to run a marathon; nevertheless, I did it.

That was also my last major exercise achievement. I ran a half-marathon in 2010, but without training and very poorly. Vanessa hasn’t run since the 2008 marathon and, in the mean time, got married and had two kids.

When we saw a Facebook Deal for 50% off registration for a half-marathon in October, it caught my interest. When I saw that the start/finish line was in a park a block away from my house, it kept my interest. I mentioned it to Vanessa, expecting her to flush the idea out of my mind.

No. She liked the idea. She wanted to do it too.

Well, we thought, if we spend the cash, we’ll run the race. She’s smarter than I am and thus will train if we’re going to run it.

While there are plenty of training programs for Couch-to-5K in six weeks or so, we haven’t found one for Marathon-to-3-Years-On-A-Couch-to-Half-Marathon in 14 weeks. Stupid? Perhaps. Insane? Probably. Go big or go home.

Yesterday was our first day of training. We run at separate times, a by-product of the kids we’ve had since we last had to train for something, but this “modified partner” system will be the only way I get out the door. The half-hour run felt good, but not as easy as it would have been a couple of years ago.

Since I’m composing this the evening before it’ll go live, the real question is will I be able to walk this morning?