Friday, October 30, 2009

This is me


I have always been a runner. When I was in 7th grade my friend at the time, Tim, introduced me to running by way of his father. His dad was a runner. He would run a 5k a few times a week, if I remember correctly. He also would smoke cigars on occasion and drink beer with dinner. Generally I liked the guy and Tim and I would run with him sometimes, but more importantly it started me running an I loved it. That lead to my first pair of running shoes and my first races, all 5ks.
When I was in high school I joined the cross country team, but that didn't last too long. That also happened to be the time when I was discovering all the dirty pleasures of life and running took a back seat. I didn't run much again until college when I got a job at a valet company. Basically I would spend 3 nights a week, for 5 or so hours at a time, driving cars from restaurants to parking lots and then briskly running back. It got me running again and I felt great. Soon after I started lifting weights and running at the university gym. I continue that to this day.
However, in the last 4 months or so my running has taken off. I went from doing a couple 5ks a week to logging 20, then 30, then 40, now 50k a week running. I ran my first 10k in 51 minutes on October 4th and ran my first half marathon this past week while training in about 2:15. I am pretty happy with these times.
I also was excepted to the Tokyo Marathon, which is on reason for me starting this blog. Out of roughly 275,000 people who applied to run, 30,000 were excepted. I was excepted. It might have to do with my location. I doubt a whole lot of runner applied from my area of Japan, its a bit remote. It could just be a completely random lottery. No idea, but I'm in and that is awesome.
I plan to keep a weekly track of my progress up until the race, about 16 weeks away. It's mainly just for me to keep track of how long or how comfortably I ran. I hope this will give me some insights into what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong, good gear and good nutrition along the way. So here we go.

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