Today is a pretty good day. Over the last two weeks I haven’t really had a set running schedule and I have felt a little lost without one. Last night I put one together and I feel pretty good about it. There are three races I will be doing over the next 15-16 weeks with the last being the full in Green Bay. I cut down on the mileage during the weeks because I don’t want a replay of early January. Plus I think it will help me work on the weight loss a little more for whatever odd reason. So now I have my weights routine that had already been set up and now I have my new running schedule. I’m pretty excited about it.

My wife and kids are leaving the country tomorrow so I have to do some grocery shopping for myself for the next week. I thought about chicken breast and broccoli (or something green) but if you now me I will buy a whole bunch of it and be tired of it by the 4th meal of it. It’ll be a long week without my family but it will be a week where I just focus on my sleeping habits and all the little things that make everything else work. I think this Saturday I will get in a long run of 7 or 8 miles, nothing too crazy but just something to get the blood flowing real well. I also need a new battery for my scale. The battery lasted a little longer than it said it would but it hardly ever works anymore. I’m looking forward to getting back to my videos with the weigh-ins. I doubt I will do a weigh in every week but one every two weeks would be a good way to go. My next race is official now; I’m running the Big D half marathon in Dallas, TX on April 5th.  It’s time to make it happen…

Today’s blog will be a little different, this could be a long one or it could be a short one. We all know what happened at Disney a couple weeks ago; I had a nice learning experience. Yesterday I had another one; I learned once again that nothing is set in stone. Yesterday my office learned that we would be closing down over the next few months. I have worked extremely hard to accomplish what I have accomplished so far with my company so I guess I should feel a little bitter, but I don’t. While it is hard to take because I enjoy my place of work sometimes hard decisions have to be made. At work today I have to lead my people into a battle that we all know we will not win, it will be hard but I know we will all step up.

This is something that may affect my race schedule. I hope that if it does it only affects the one race in the UK as it would be the most expensive one. Hopefully, somehow I find a way over there and I run this year like I planned out. All things happen for a reason and this has happened for a reason. What reason, I can’t answer that right now but what I do know is that it will help me train harder than ever before. Why, because it is the only thing that I can control. Even though my blog today isn’t a happy one, it isn’t sad either. I have to pick myself up and move to the next step, sound familiar. I will make the best of whatever comes my way and tomorrow we blog about running again.

Today marks the beginning of the new “season” for me. I have my races planned out and my resistance training already set up for the next 48 weeks. The only thing that is not set in stone is my running schedule. I’ll get that more together over the next week or so. My first race of the year is already ready to go. I’m going to Dallas to do the Big D Half Marathon on April 5^th, 2009. I’m excited about it. My daughter is excited too because for whatever reason she has always wanted to go to Texas. I don’t know if she is going yet because she would have to convince her mother to let her go with me. Mr. Marathoner’s running season has officially begun. I’m excited; I want to get the race experience in many times over this year. That way when I get to something like Disney again it will be just another race, even though we know that isn’t the case. So once again I have 7 planned races with one that is official so far. It’s going to be a great year.

On another note, there is a new website. It is called www.MrMarathonerRunners.com. It is a site that was started up so that people who have been inspired by me (I still find that kind of hard to believe) can tell their story. We would love to have people send their pics and keep us updated on their progress as the go along on their journey. I don’t care if you are large or small; if you’ve been inspired we want to hear about it. If you have any questions just email me I answer all of them. Come on people, let’s get this movement started.

A quick update on what’s going on with me. My leg feels good; there are no fractures so those were just some major shin splints. I never had them like that before. I’m in the process of putting together a 12 week resistance training program for myself; maybe I will post that in my training section too. I am also in the process of looking for my next races. There are tons in my area here and I figure instead of doing these long runs at home why not do them in an actual race that will keep time and let me know how I am really doing when it comes down to it. I’ve found some half marathons that I would like to begin doing, I am looking for something in mid March but the earliest I can find that I would like to do is April 5^th in Dallas, Texas. I didn’t like the reviews of the race but I’m not there to critique a course I’m there to critique myself. After that I there were some more in May and June. In May I might do the Cellcom Green Bay full to get that first full marathon out of the way. I haven’t really looked into July and August but I’m sure I will find something. In September I found a run in the UK, the New Forest half marathon. I think I may go that route because I can run the race and then catch a couple Premier League games while I am in the country (preferably Chelsea or Liverpool, or maybe Chelsea vs. Liverpool). As long as I can register before it fills up I want to do the Marine Corps full marathon in October of 2009, the pace there is 14 minutes but at that point I don’t see my pace being much of an issue. That’s three races so far that I would do outside of my home state of Wisconsin with one of them being out of the country. I would like to possibly do another one during the year in a different state in maybe July or August but we’ll see. I’m back to training by next Tuesday but I may go back on Saturday because I really don’t feel like waiting that long. I want to see how I feel. It will be treadmill work but it is work nonetheless. None of the stuff up above is set in stone but I will update things as I register for these races. I plan on making it a busy year so this one should be a wild ride…

I am back from my Disney weekend and we did not have the results we were looking for. It was a hard fight but in the end I had to walk away so that I could live to fight another day. At the time I packed it in I had slowed down so much and I was still on pace. That’s kind of ironic after me not even being close to keeping pace last year. A couple good things from these races were that my brother in law completed the Goofy Challenge (again) and my wife finished her first (and last) marathon. When I could no longer go I made sure struggle my way to the Magic Kingdom and then to Animal Kingdom to support my family. Last year I was pretty hurt about it, this year I was just disappointed but ready to get things back together and continue my mission. I am going to race more frequently, I am looking for a half marathon in a couple months or so if anyone reads this and knows about any good ones in their area I would love to hear about them. I am going to focus on shedding some more pounds so over the next couple months I can take some of the stress off of my legs. I have to believe that the weight and possibly going out too fast at Disney may have done me in. This is a problem I deal with, cardio wise I can handle it but my joints and things can’t. We live and learn. I’m anxious to get back to it but I need to make sure I didn’t do anything serious first. I ran into a few people over the weekend and I appreciate all of your support. With support like this how can I stop? My story continues…

Where do I start? Can you be totally confident but at the same time so nervous that you start to question if it is just nerves or if you really aren’t as confident as you think. This is why I have a game plan, I stick to it and all will go well. I’ll talk about something that I rarely ever talk about, last year. That is what we will call it, last year, nothing else. The only thing that lingers from last year is the feeling I had when I knew I wasn’t going to finish. They let me go for another mile when I could have just stopped there so I took the extra mile. I had to call my wife who was with the rest of my family at the Magic Kingdom at mile 11 and tell her that I was finished. Then I had to look my family in their eyes and smile, crack a joke here and there just to keep myself from crying. It worked. That day, last year, was one of the worst days in my life and I can count those days on one hand. I said all that to say this is why I think I am nervous like I am right now. While I will be nervous until I see the finish line on Sunday I am going to enjoy this race. There are parts of Disney I have never seen before so while I am there I will check out what I have missed over the years. I spoke about my game plan in my last blog and the only thing I am going to add to that is at around mile 5 I will walk a full mile just to check out my walking pace, who knows maybe I will do it again a couple times later in the race to break it up a little. Tomorrow morning I do my last run in Green Bay before we fly to Orlando tomorrow night, then from there I will have a couple more short runs in Orlando. Saturday morning will be my dress rehearsal and then Sunday will be the real deal. I have 7 hours to complete 26.2 miles, I can do that can’t I? Of course this will be the heaviest I ever run a marathon so from that stand point this one should be the most difficult but nothing is easy anyway. Writing this has made the nerves go away a little, a lot actually. I’m a little more than 3 days away…

First off, Happy New Year everyone, it’s been a while since I have blogged but I’m back and the time is almost here. I’ve been working out a few kinks in the armor, mainly my shins. My plan at Disney is to take the race 12 minutes at a time. I plan on running for 8 minutes and walking 4 then start the 12 minutes over again. That should get me across the finish line in the time allowed and help me keep my mind off the 16 minute pace. I must say I have never been affected by nerves more than this race has affected me lately. If you need an example of what I mean, I went to work yesterday and about an hour in I realized that I had the day off. Nice!!! It is what it is, sometimes I’m nervous, while all the time I’m really excited. I’m coming off some great workouts the last couple of days and I feel great so I expect things to go well. I will be putting my 8 min/run 4 min/walk to the test on Saturday on the treadmill to see how it goes. I don’t have a lot to say today (nerves again?) but one thing I can honestly say, I love this running stuff and I can’t seem to get enough of it. More than likely this is going to be the last time I ever have to worry about the pace of a race and that’s a great feeling. If you haven’t started running yet, today is the day. If you can’t run, walk. It is changing my life…