Dreaming Big

I promise to you, my beloved readers, a recap of last weekend's San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Half Marathon. For now, it should suffice to say that it was ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL! If you ever, ever get a chance to run in San Diego, jump on it like I might jump on bacon. I'm that serious.

For now, I want to get this onto my blog so that I can track my training whenever I need to. For those of you who don't know, I decided that the *perfect* way to celebrate my 28th birthday would be to run and complete my first (and depending on how it turns out, possibly my only) full marathon. I signed up for the Portland Marathon, which takes place on October 9th this year, 3 days after my 28th birthday.

Since I tend to do well when I adhere to a running schedule, I asked a few of my marathoner friends what they have done to train in the past. My favorite of those recommended came from my friend Lafe, who completed the Seattle Marathon in less than 4 hours last fall. He suggested the Hal Higdon website, which has a lot of different schedules for people of different abilities. Since I'm coming right off of a half-marathon, it seemed okay, even reasonable to settle on Intermediate 2 schedule, which will allow me to do 2 20-mile runs before the race itself. It looks like it will challenge me, but not so much to scare or overwhelm me:



I'm surprisingly excited, which I think might be attributed to coming off of a sub-2-hour half marathon (yay!). Wish me luck, and come run with me sometime!