First Strides

I love this part. There's energy to burn. People line the course and cheer for friends/family and strangers alike. If it's the Peachtree Road Race or a major marathon, helicopters hover overhead, their rotors beating the air and mimic the pounding of thousands of heartbeats. Everything is potential.

Kinda like white space on the page.

So off I start: in the coming days, I will record some of my strides on this particular course. The finish line I have in sight is Maui, where Laura, Sarah, and I will celebrate with Paul on his birthday. And what better way to celebrate than to run a marathon? Training -- based on the FIRST training program -- commences in earnest next week, but I've been building miles and getting in some speed work the past couple of weeks. I also competed in the Callaway Gardens duathlon last weekend. I'm not where I'd like to be as I start this phase of training. But with each stride, I get a little closer.

I ditched yesterday's long run. Hmph -- that's an auspicious start, isn't it? Last week was a miserable travel week -- Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta -- so I listened to my body and took it easy. Yesterday's Morning Run intermediate cohort -- which I lead -- consisted of John Clopton and me. John's been working out consistently lately, and I took advantage of the diminished numbers and my relatively fresh legs and put us through a relatively vigorous 4.5 miles. We started out comfortably at 10+ minutes for the first mile, but as we neared Piedmont Park we picked up the pace a bit. Inside the park we ran the lower meadow loop and then up to the new 1/2 mile oval. We decided to push that a bit and ran the oval in less than 4 minutes. We took it relatively easy back to toward the 5th Street Starbucks and completed our distance in under 10 minute pace.

The distance felt good and the pace felt great. Hopefully the base miles and cross-training are paying off.

Now comes the hard work, with the Peachtree Road Race in the middle. I'm in one of the lower seeded starting groups and will be running to maintain that spot. Based on last fall's ATL 1/2 marathon time, I should be close to 52:30. Should be doable; that would be only 2 minutes off last year's time (in the scorching heat). One stride in front of the other -- let the funrunnin' begin!