Running with Jack

Today is a non-running day. If my patient at home is feeling better (wifey has the flu) I will probably go to the garden and finish digging up my garden beds. Our garden is located about 11K (6.8 miles) from our house, in the town where we used to live. We belong to a garden club, made up of 80 gardens on land leased from the German Railroad (Deuschebahn). This is very common here in Germany.

I was looking over my marathon training plan last night, I’ve run 470K (292 miles) so far this year. I was originally planning to run my first marathon in May (Mannheim Marathon - May 21), but decided to wait until the Baden Marathon on September 18th. This nice spring weather that we are having has me thinking about May again – I could still do it – I just completed a 25-26K (15-16 mile) run this past Friday. Hmmm!

That would mean I would have to run 28K (17.4 miles) on April 2nd; 30K (18.6 miles) on April 16th; and at least 32K (20 miles) on April 30th. Ouch! What did Chris Brogan say about pain is just weakness leaving the body (actually he said pain is pain). I’m motivated (crazy?) enough to do it, but my wife is definitely against this idea, so I will probably have to be patient and hold out until September. This would mean I need to slow down a little bit for now so I don’t blow a gasket or something before the marathon. In any case I have about two weeks to think about it before I would need to commit myself to a May marathon.