26.2 - the pregame

First off, welcome to my new blog. Thanks for reading.

Secondly, I have decided to run in Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota in June. I will start training for it on Tuesday, so I figured I could use this as an opportunity to post my progress, as well as any random thoughts about any random things that come into my mind along the way.

My running background is brief. I started running in spring 2005 when I decided that I wanted to lose weight and get in shape. In August 2006 I ran a half marathon in a time of just over 1 hour and 46 minutes. I averaged just over 8 minutes a mile, which was slightly slower than my goal time. I took about 3 months off of running after that because I was burned out. Now I'm motivated to run a full marathon, driven by the desire to complete an Ironman Triathlon in the next few years.

I'll give frequent updates of my progress on here. So you know, I start training this coming Tuesday with a 3 mile run. I think that tomorrow I will order a Garmin Forerunner GPS because I just moved to Iowa and I have no running routes like I had back in Fargo, North Dakota. I need the Garmin to make sure I run enough to keep up with my training plan.