I've been away for a while . . . But I'm back.

Hi everyone! I'm sorry that I've been so negligent in posting to my blog . . . but now I'm back! I had a very busy and very stressful start to the new year. As you may remember, I was really stressed about going back to work after the winter break, and then January was incredibly busy and February wasn't much better. January and February are the admissions season at NYC independent schools so that meant lots of work for me. Then in February and March, Sara and I were in the process of packing up and moving to our new place. That whole process of moving was incredibly stressful and just took tons of time . . . In any case, that is all to excuse my lack of posting anything since January 5th. But I'm back now . . . and I'm on Spring Break and I'm relaxing which means getting some more runs in!

I have established for myself a calendar for training and if I can figure it out, I might put it up here on the blog. I am going to start the formal "Training" on July 1st. That first week the calendar has me running 22 miles. Now I can't just start off training by running 22 miles. First I have to get up to a "base" of 20 miles/week. that is 2 three mile runs, 2 four mile runs, and 1 six mile run. I want to have that base established for at least one full month prior to beginning to increase my mileage. It is important that I don't increase my weekly mileage too rapidly or I risk hurting myself. I want to make sure that I train carefully and thoughtfully so that I don't injure myself. Today is March 22nd, which means that I have a little over two months to get up to my base of 20 miles/week by June 1st. I am going to find it much easier to find time to run now that it is much lighter out and it is turning to spring. The only little hiccup is the fact that I'm coaching tennis once again this year which means that I lose afternoons as good running time. I don't get home after tennis practice until 6:30 or so. This means that I'm going to have to serious consider waking up 30 or 45 minutes earlier each morning to get a good run in then . . . Sara won't be too happy about that.

In any case, I found a good training schedule on the NYRR website that I'm going to use . . . hopefully I won't kill myself.

The other thing that I've been really negligent in doing is running races. Ideally this year's marathon will be the first of many . . . but that means that I have to run nine races each year to guarantee my entry. By this time last year I had already run four races, but I'm really behind now. I shouldn't be too much trouble to get my nine in b/c the marathon will count for one, but NYRR has added one more requirement to guaranteeing eligibility for the marathon for 2009: volunteering at one race in the year . . . so that means I have to sign up for that too! I'll make it work, but I need to get on it!

Well, anyway. I'm back. Sorry I've been gone so long, but I will be much more diligent about posting from now on!