Hello and welcome to my Training Blog!
I am an adult onset athlete who discovered that while I may not be a fast runner, I do like to push my endurance. I didn’t discover this until 2005 when I ran my first Marathon. It was the NYC Marathon.
I first registered for the NYC Revlon 5k that was early summer of 2005. My wife was going to be out of town and it sounded like a fun thing to do. I used the famous “couch to 5K” program from coolrunning.com. I only lasted a couple days with that program because the “run 30 seconds walk 2 minutes” concept just didn’t keep my attention.
So untrained, I ran my first ever 5K. I had no idea how far a 5K was and I had no idea what I was in store for.
Basically, I ran fast for the first 1/2 mile or so, stopped to walk the first water stop. Hobbled another mile, stopped to stretch, and made it across the finish line in just over 32 minutes. Basically, the 5K hurt. It hurt a whole lot!
What was cool was the finish line. I shed tears of joy as I rounded the corner in north central park and painfully sprinted through the finish. Follow that up with a sense of accomplishment, raising money for womens cancers, and the post race party! (in hindsight, thank goodness there was still goody bags left for me).
In my “act now think later” mind, it only made sense that if I enjoyed crossing this finish line so much, just think how awesome it would be to cross the finish line of the NEW YORK CITY MARATHON!
So I went home, learned the marathon selection was based on a lottery, entered my name, and then fell asleep for the rest of the day.
Life returned to normal and I practically forgot I had put my name in the lottery.
As luck would have it, a couple weeks later I get a package in the mail from the New York Road Runners congratulating me on my acceptance into the big race.
The first thought that went through my head was “oooOOHh $#!T!!!!!!!!” Once that feeling passed I decided to start training. I mean only like 40% of the people that enter the lottery actually get in to the race. Who was I to deny someone else a spot and just let it go? So I became a runner.
Fast forward a couple years and a few marathons, I still enjoy the feeling I get from running and I love crossing finish lines. Crossing a finish line for an event that you have trained for and put your all into is a feeling beyond euphoria!
And I understand the importance of cross training. In came triathlons. My first Tri was a sprint in Harriman State Park NY that I entered while preparing for the Westchester Tri with Team in Training.
I have put together this blog as an area to keep all my thoughts, training, racing dates, and anything else together. I hope you enjoy it and please feel free to post comments, give advice, or share your training blogs as well.
Steve