Bellingham Half-Marathon - Training Day 16

So in truth my 16th training session was actually yesterday but I didn't get around to posting until now...

Well it's been 4 weeks since my last post and it has been a tremendously busy month. At the end of June I travelled to Bangladesh to meet with a prospective client and on the way home I got food poisoning which put me in the hospital in Hong Kong for 2 days. That little episode cost me 1 weeks training (missed all 4 runs that week). However I am happy to say that since I have returned home I have completed 9 straight training runs and am now full on into my training for the race.

Each day I feel stronger, my speed is being relatively maintained as I go further and further distances however with each passing run my average heart rate continues to go down. This means I am getting stronger cardio-vascularly and I expect that to only continue to get better as I keep training. Right now I am averaging speeds on my runs that would allow me to complete the half-marathon in under 2 hours and 30 minutes which is my goal for this race.

My average heart rate over my last 9 training runs is sitting 12 bpm less than what it was for the Eugene half-marathon I ran in May while my average speed is up almost half a mile per hour over what it was at this stage of my training for Eugene. I am feeling particularly good about this especially given the fact that due to all the vacation and business trips I had in March/April this year in advance of the Eugene race May 2nd, I only got in about 55% of the training runs I had scheduled for that period of time. If I can maintain my current commitment to my training through race day, that is just going to make me that much stronger this time around.

On another good news front, my lovely wife Cheryll has decided that she is going to walk the Bellingham race and has started her training for it as well. This is something that makes me very happy as it gives us something else that we can do together (albeit I will run and she will walk but I'll be at the finish line cheering her on!). She was inspired in some part by our new friends Jim and Sue whom I raced with in Eugene. They are speed walkers (and I mean "Speed") who are in their 60's and are two of the most amazing people I know. Jim is a real inspiration to me and I hope that when I am his age I am running races as strong as he does.

On the weight loss front, I have lost almost 25lbs. in the last 6 months. I don't see it obviously day in day out but others who don't see me all the time notice it. Plus while I have only lost 25 lbs. overall I have definitely lost more lbs of fat then that. Last night our family went to a movie and met my sister and her daughter there and when my niece saw me she says "Uncle Mike look at you, you have lost a lot of weight!". Now I haven't seen her in about 6 weeks but if it is that noticeable what I have lost in 6 weeks I guess I'm going in the right direction.

I'm still not worrying overly about my nutrition as we usually eat fairly healthy (movie theatre popcorn last night being an exception not a rule) but I am watching it carefully. They say you don't want to lose too much too fast when you are training and I can understand why, however if I can maintain a 1 lb. a week or so average weight loss then I think I am doing ok and will be able to maintain that loss in the long run. I still have 35 lbs. to lose to get back to where I was before I joined World Vision but I will get there this year and then look out as I continue to work my way down to my ultimate weight goal.

Next week I am leaving on a roughly 2 week trip to Toronto, Manila and Phnom Penh and that is going to be a true test to my training commitment but I really believe I am up for the challenge as even though I made this crazy journey to Dhaka, Bangladesh I got my training run in in Dhaka even when the hotel gym's air conditioning wasn't working properly and I was running 33 plus degree heat (and humidity).

I can't express how much encouragement I get from family and friends comments when I post updates on facebook and here but it is those encouraging words that keep me going and make me realise that I can have an impact not just on my life but on others as well. Oh yeah, my former assistant from WVI, Megan is also going to be racing in Bellingham and I'd like to think I had a little to do with that (ok maybe all my nagging her about coming and running it with me was a part of it!). Megan will likely kick my butt on race day (she is 15+ years younger than me) but I am ok with that, it just gives me something to shoot for in my next race!

Right now I am planning on running Bellingham and then another half-marathon race sometime in January before running the Eugene Half-Marathon again next May. I will start to run shorter distance races in the midst of my training (5 and 10k's) but my focus will always be on the "big" races. As I get stronger I will race more often but at this point I would like to do a minimum of 4 big races a year. People have asked me about whether I am going to run a marathon and right now my answer is I don't know about the future but I will not run one until after I run next years Eugend Half as I want to do a direct comparison about the difference in me one year later over the previous year's race. Not just in how fast I can run but where I am at physically, spiritually and emotionally. Then and only then will I consider whether I even want to run a full marathon. 13.1 miles (21.08 km's for those of you who think metric) is a LONG distance, and I may just be happy racing that distance for the rest of my running days. I suspect I won't and will want to challenge myself further but that is 10 months down the road and a lot can happen in that time.

Well, my insomnia seems to be waning and I need to get more sleep so will sign-off for now. Thanks for continuing to read my thoughts and I'll "talk" to you next time.

Mike