New year - full of good intentions...

Days til race: 101

In October 2013 My Dad and friend Rhi both ran the Melbourne Marathon.  I ran the 10km event and after puffing my way round the course in a pedestrian 53mins I felt little qualified to join in the running conversation when we went out for lunch afterwards.  Deciding that it'd been on my "one day" list long enough I bit the bullet and entered the Canberra Marathon.

That was the easy bit and with 5 months til the starter's gun would be fired it was easy to imagine that I'd get all the training done, have reached my goal race-weight and be completely mentally prepared for the event.  But have I bitten off more than I can chew?

January 1st has rolled around and I'm faced with the reality that this year will be the one that I'm attempting to run my first marathon; not some far off "next year" event but now. This year. Staring me right in the face and ironically I can't run from it any more.  The excesses of the festive period behind me I've run out of delay time and must begin the journey - or else face the consequences (namely 5 plus hours of pain and humiliation).

So - to begin...

A few weeks ago I set out a list of New Year Goals/Resolutions that I'd follow to assist my on my path to marathon running.  They are:

1. No alcohol  - except for Australia Day (26.01), My best friend's wedding (15.02), Labour Day weekend (08.03) and when I catch up with my friend Pete to ask him how the hell one is supposed to train to run a marathon.

2.  Up until the race:
 - fried food only once a week
 - eat proper dinners (not toasted cheese sandwich meals)
 - no red bull, bbq shapes, crisps or savoy biscuits

Will pause here as my mind has become distracted thinking about how much I love savoy biscuits and whether I should in fact strike that item from the list as I love them so much... No - they're still banned.

Right, where were we before my dry biscuit diversion?

3. Drink 2 litres of water/day

4. Commit to my training programme (4 x runs a week minimum)

5. Get at least 7 hours of sleep a night.

Does any of this actually translate to me getting out there and doing the training? I hope so. 42km is a long way if I'm 10kg heaver thanks to a summer of beer and bread as my sole diet.

I probably should have gone for a long run today so I'd have something to good start the year with, but tiredness from New Year's Eve and incessant rain has meant that this is more of a 'mental preparation day'.

So time to charge up my garmin, work out an actual training plan and actually take the first step out the door and begin my training!