After some technical difficulties and some quick help from a nice support person at St. Jude (thanks, Sara), I got my Heroes fundraising page up and running. Check it out: Pete's Fundraising Page. I spent a lot of time on my "message", but I think I'm happy with it - it's honest, forthright, sincere, and hopefully not overwhelming, which are all qualities I find effective whenever I'm approached by a charity.
I also have my training program set. I reviewed a number of programs, and the Heroes team gets a nice online program from Active.com, but ultimately I opted for Hal Higdon's Intermediate I Program (thanks, Phil). I might be foolish for taking on a program like this, especially considering I've never run a marathon before. But I've completed six half marathons and have been running for about three years fairly consistently now. Ultimately I just want to finish the race, but the competitor in me has my eyes set on a lofty goal of finishing under four hours (03:59:59). That's a 9:09 pace. I've been an 8:45-9:05 pacer for my half marathons, so I think that's doable, especially if I stick to the program and avoid stupid mistakes. But only time will tell.
This program requires six days of training a week - five days of running and one cross training day with some strength training and stretching commingled on the lighter days. I've only been doing four days a week up until now, so the commitment alone of six days a week is going to be a challenge. The program requires long runs on Sundays, but because Saturdays just work better for me for that time commitment, I'm moving all the days up. So long runs will be on Saturday, the Tuesday workout will really be done on Monday, and so on. That means my 18-week program started today. I had to do 30 minutes of cross training and think about the 18 weeks ahead. Boy, did I!
After dinner I took Lori and the kids for a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood. They're coming along for the ride, so there really was no other way I wanted to start this program - spending some time with my inspiration. We talked quite a bit about what was ahead. The whole family got excited. Okay, who am I kidding? Lori got excited. Gabriel almost fell asleep, and Emary, well, she just liked seeing the occasional group of kids playing and dogs barking.
I'm about to send out my first wave of emails to people about the race. I'm excited and anxious about how it will be received.
Tomorrow starts my first running day of the program... 3 easy miles.
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