Good to get back to it

After a battle with laziness, I made myself go running sometime around 5:30 last night. It truly was an epic battle of will. It was a cold run and by the end of it, darkness was creeping in. I felt good to have finished it though.

I can tell a difference in mornings where I wake up after a run and days after no run. The next day after I run, I can tell I have a lot more energy. My usual wake up is that I crawl out of bed and stumble around the house in an effort to get ready for work.

If I've been running, I pretty much wake up instantly. I can get around the house much easier and it is not hard to figure out what I'm doing. That's a huge bonus for me.

I'm not sure if Evan finished his run. He's kind of a hard guy to get in contact with. I'll find out when he shows up to run today.

Saturday is our expected day to finally acquire running shoes. We're going to try to hit the Trak Shak for some professional advice. I want to make sure that my legs don't tear up from running.

So, yeah...

If you read Evan's posting from yesterday, you know that we ended up not running our second day of actual running. Both of us were sore and the extra resting time was much appreciated.

Today, we'll have to make up the day separately. I'll be able to do my running after work today. Evan will probably get his done in the morning on our mom's treadmill. At least we'll make up for it. Hopefully, we won't be hurting as bad from today's run and will be good to go for Friday. I really don't want to push a run onto Saturday just yet.

Rest for My Legs

Today we we're supposed to run again, and yesterday I thought I would be up for it. Today I woke up with some seriously sore legs, so running has been postponed until tomorrow. Friday's running is still scheduled for Friday, and I have to admit I'm feeling really good about this whole experience!

Finally moving faster

Yesterday, Evan and I actually did our first bit of jogging in preparation for next year's marathon. We had to run for one minute and walk two minutes and repeat until thirty minutes had passed.

I realized during our training that I am in better shape than I originally thought. I had anticipated that even this early jogging would hurt incredibly, but I found that I didn't really break a sweat and we kept a conversation going the whole time.

Evan seemed to have a tougher time with the jogging, but that seemed to be off set by the fact that he really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, but he seemed downright ecstatic over being outside and doing something athletic. I hope he still has that vigor when we're putting down upwards of 10 miles in a single session.

Pain showed up pretty quick once we were finished. Both of us had our complaints, but it seems that our little bit of exercise was enough to get somewhat of an endorphin rush, because it wasn't long after we stopped that we both were feeling pretty good.

Today, I'm feeling really good and I'm not hurting at all besides a little soreness in my calf muscles. Hopefully I'll be recovered from that for tomorrow's jog. If I find that we're both hurting badly tomorrow, we might push Wednesday's run to Thursday.

Running Jealousy

So it all started when I had to work the day of the Mercedes Marathon in Birmingham, Alabama. I'm a web producer for the local television station and the only one available to cover the race. So I spent a weekend watching people run these different races and thinking about how I used to run and how I enjoyed it.

I don't do much running anymore. As a matter of fact, I currently am around 75-100 pounds overweight. I'm naturally a pretty big guy at 6'4", but I'm currently 300 pounds. I've been like this now for about 2 years after getting married in 2008. Something about getting hitched killed my want to hit the gym anymore.

Before I started dating my wife, I was a mean 225 pounds and 10% bodyfat. I had fallen in line with some amateur bodybuilders in college and this had helped me achieve a level of fitness that I had never experienced. I kept it up for a couple of months after graduation, but immediately backslid upon the beginning of my relationship with my soon-to-be wife.

Back to the point of this blog; I decided while I was watching the runners enjoy the Mercedes Marathon that my place wasn't supposed to be at my desk when I should be out there running with them. So, I got fired up and decided that I would train all year to run in the 2011 Mercedes Marathon. In my zeal to get started, I mentioned it to my younger brother, Evan, who surprisingly decided that he would run also.

My little brother has never really been in shape. He's always been a giant of a person and, besides a brief season of high school football, hasn't ever felt much interest in being in shape. He is the same height and weight as me, but he doesn't have the athletic history I do. It will be interesting to see if this kind of training affects us differently.

I've found this plan for running a marathon in a year. This plan really looks like it will work for us and it seems pretty simple. I've also developed a weight training regimen and I plan to cross train with my recumbent bike.

My biggest problem right now is my diet. I try to eat right, but regularly fail at that. Evan has a similar issue since he's has been know to devour entire family-sized frozen entrees. I'm going to work on the diet part, but that's really the area where I lack the most knowledge.

I'd like to add that all comments and advice are welcome. If you run at all, then you've got more experience than the both of us. So, feel free to add anything to our running discussions.

At the time of this writing, we've finished two workouts that have consisted of walking for 30 minutes. Yeah, that is really easy, but we're easing into this stuff. Next week we'll be running for one minute and then walking for two minutes. Eventually, we'll be running for 30 minutes straight. That will be right before we get into the "Building Up" phase.