Update from Starpilgrim

Most of the stuff about me you can find from looking at my profile... so I'll leave out most of the general bio stuff.

I have run for exercise since I was in 6th grade, on teams for about 6 years of that time. I often say that I'm not coordinated enough to do most other sports -- running is just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. I also like running because of the minimal equipment and venue considerations. I've been a distance runner all of my running life (not a sprinter, etc.) because I am not built like a runner -- the longer the distances, it seems, the more of a mind game is involved, and my mind is my strong suit. I can be subborn... ahem, determined... so my will power and self-talk kick in where my body is hesitant.

It has been a goal of mine since I started running to do a marathon at least once in my life. After deciding that last year was the year and Cape Cod was the place, I trained for about 6 months before a minor injury was just enough to throw me off balance. I lost momentum and just couldn't get back on track.

So this year when rawbroccoli came to me and said that she'd heard I trained for a marathon last year... and asked if I wanted to try one this year with her... I jumped at the chance. In my experience there's safety (and increased success) in numbers in this kind of thing. And my confidence is quite high this year, as I learned a lot from training last year and have more purpose and support now.

So off we go... I've been training with the marathon in mind since the beginning of March, training on a schedule since the beginning of April. My longest run so far is 8 miles. I'm running 5 days a week (4 on my easy weeks which come once a month), probably an average of 20 miles a week so far. My next goal is to be more intentional about doing other strengthening kinds of exercise, especially for my abs, which are currently getting the short end of the stick.

Thanks for visiting and for your support! Let us know what you want to see on this blog if you have specific ideas. And give running a try... you never know -- you may get hooked.