Registerd for Portland

ORN: Saturday: 15.3 miles, 2:34:45, 10:06/mile
Sunday: 7 miles, no watch, felt good
37.5 miles for the week

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for The Portland Marathon on October 1. I’ve been talking about it for months and now I’m in. It is interesting, psychologically, what that simple commitment does. Now I’m really going. I’m in. I even know my bib number, a neat part of the registration process.

This pretty much defines my running now for the next 2.5 months. I sat down with Hal Higdon's Intermediate MARATHON TRAINING GUIDE and laid out each day and each week to that point. It made sense and appears very doable. Further, this program has more miles built into it than his Novice plan, which I used to prepare for the St Louis Marathon and that worked out fine. More miles, two 20 milers, some speed work.

Better, I can do it cheap. By booking early, the registration and air fare from Indy will only set me back around $300. Since middle son Nathan lives and works in Portland, I can stay cheap and it will be great to be with him in his world.

The training really came in earnest the past two weeks. My summer training plan worked out reasonably and now I can launch into the higher mileage weeks reasonably well. Yesterday’s scheduled 15 miler went well, which is surprising since I was just over 10 min/mile for the whole trip. Yet I haven’t done 15 miles since the marathon on April 9 but I really enjoyed it. It was fun to just run and run and run for 2.5 hours. I never needed to walk, despite the temperature being nearly 80 by the time I ended.

Coming back this morning was a wonderful 7 mile run. The temperatures dropped to a “frosty” 63, and it felt marvelous.

So, there we have it. Two marathons in 2006. An objective. A reason to claw out of bed at 5:15am daily. Stay tuned.

Persevere.