First Post!

Not me. Just what my daughter thinks I look like running.

Ok, here we go! I feel like I'm at the start of a race, nervous and scared and having to pee and all!

The kids are (both!) at school, I've cleaned out all the secret trash that my daughter had squirreled away in her room during vacation, I got my run in early this morning and I really have no more excuses to not write this-my first post of my new blog!

In this blog I'm going to write about my training for the marathon in Rio de Janeiro on July 7, 2013! Its offiical name is Maratona do Rio and from the website and googling it looks like it attracts about 5,000 men and 5 women to run in the pouring rain alongside what are usually beautiful beaches to the deafening screams of about 10 spectators who may or may not be still out partying from the night before. Most of that information I gleaned from watching this video that an Australian guy took during last year's race. It's pretty depressing stuff and not very inspiring to be honest. At one point I think he gets passed by a Christmas tree. So that's going to be one of my personal goals: to beat the Christmas tree!

It's really not a good sign that this is considered to be one of the best marathons in Brazil, a giant country filled with hundreds of thousands of people who love to run and it looks like a tiny race with nobody watching. I'm hoping that last year was a fluke because of the rain and that usually there are lots of crowds (aka people on the beach who turn around and cheer). 

Here's what I know about the race so far:

It's a point to point (like Boston) so I'll have to take a bus from the city to a town outside and then we run in, mostly along the coastline. We come into Rio and run along the beaches so go by Ipanema and Copacabana beaches and pass the big Christ the Redeemer statue:

I'll be back!! (without the kid and not so close)

Here's the course map:

It's supposed to be flat! My friend Matt in the video shows himself huffing and puffing up only one hill so that's good. 

I think the biggest negative is that it's going to be totally devoid of fans but if I go into it knowing that then I'll be ready for it. My own personal fan base claims that they will be on the beach the entire time and that if I call them they may come out to cheer for me but no guarantees. Great. So basically I'll be gutting this one out myself. 

Here's what I have for a training plan: 

Nothing. Crickets. Still working on it. 

I'm thinking of going with Hal Higdon Advanced I because I've used his plans before and I think with a little tweaking it could work for me. The biggest change I would make is that he wants 6 days of running and that's not going to happen for me. I've gone a whole year without getting injured running only 5 days a week so I think I'll stick with that. I've drafted BBinBrazil to be my coach so I'm going to let her work her magic and come up with an awesome plan for me. She's also going to be kicking my butt every Thursday morning doing hills or tempo runs or 800s or some other type of torture so I'm sure I'll be complaining blogging about that every week. 

Here's where I'm at for fitness (physical and mental):

Physically I feel like I'm in the best shape I've been in for many many years. Now I run about 20-30 miles a week and do one day of hill work and I try to sneak some yoga in one day. I'm training to run a half marathon on February 24 so I did  a 15 mile long run a couple weeks ago and will do a 12 miler this weekend. I'm looking forward to starting to build up my miles, figure out my fueling and get my body ready for July! 

Mentally I always feel like I need work. I used to think of myself as pretty mentally tough and then I tried to run the Burlington VT marathon in May 2011 and I totally bonked and didn't finish. The whole sad story complete with pictures can be found here. The experience made me question my training, my motivation and my toughness. It took me awhile to get my head back in it but I feel like I have and I've had lots of good races since then. But....when I finish I never feel like I've given 100%. I might dry heave a little and be out of breath but give me a few minutes and I'm fine. One of my goals for this race (and the training for it) is to try to push myself beyond my limits and to experience that ease and power that William James talks about in the quote I posted. Scott Jurek talks a lot about pushing yourself to your limits in his new book Eat and Run and I found myself inspired as I was reading it to do the same. Now it's a matter of actually doing it. This half marathon in February will be a good trial run-I definitely want to try and beat my time from last year (1:51) and I'm hoping to get under 1:45. 

So I'm excited that you (mom? dad? husband?) are going to join me on this road to Rio! I'll let Ester Dean sing us out from the movie Rio...