Chimeric Dream

As of today, I am officially signed up to run in my second half-marathon. My first one was last week, and after last night’s Do Life 5k in Kansas City, I felt inspired to do it again. I haven’t quite figured out what’s wrong with me just yet, but lab tests are pending.

The race I will be running in is the Kansas City Marathon. The event is a fund raiser for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, so it’s a great cause. If you want to contribute to my fundraising, see the link below. Something else really exciting about this race is the fact that Becca will be running! She won’t be doing the half-marathon, but she’ll be rocking the 5k.

If you’re interested in donating to our team, feel free to contribute at our donation page here. If you can’t or don’t want to, that’s cool too. If you want to come watch us race, we’d love you for it (unless you want to run with us, which we’d like more ;-p ).

If you are interested in running the race with me, here’s my training schedule. Feel free to follow along and, if you want to join me, copy the training plan to your calendar. I have a couple of customizations built into the plan, so if you want the original, you can find it on Hal Higdon’s website.

Tonight was the Kansas City leg of the official Do Life whirlwind tour through the US, and it was awesome.

For those who don’t know, Ben Davis is the guy who inspired me to finally get off my ass and start running. Ben has started the “Do Life” movement, which is aimed at making changes in your life to make your life better. It’s a pretty cool idea, and I suggest subscribing to Ben’s blog. You won’t regret it.

Tonight’s run was a pretty casual affair. There were about 35-40 (ish) people who showed up to the Liberty Memorial in downtown Kansas City for the 5k. Even in that small group, I saw the full spectrum of runners: there were a few who looked like they were completely new to it, those who (like me) have been doing it for a few months to a few years, and there were a few who looked like they could have been professional runners.

I’m still pretty sore from my race last week, so after the first mile, I took it pretty easy. I walked quite a bit and chatted with a woman who also started running this year. I think that was the whole point of tonight’s gathering: just meet with other people who have similar stories (I lost track of how many people I met who have only been running for a few months) and talk, listen, and just generally have a good time.

After the run, we car pooled down to the Chipotle in the Power & Light district and hung out for a couple hours. The food was good (it’s Chipotle… hard to go too wrong), the conversation was awesome, and it was just a good time overall.

I’m really glad that I got to do this, more glad that Ben has shared all that he has through his blog, even more glad that he has served as an inspiration to so many, and infinitely more glad that I have finally started taking control of my life to affect positive change.

This was a good day, and I can’t wait for next year’s tour!

Over the weekend I got a new pair of running shoes, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I spent this much money on any article of clothing, much less a pair of shoes! Here’s a quick pic:

I have to say, they are pretty comfortable. My old shoes (only 6 months old, but still…) were starting to give me blisters whenever I’d run more than 2-3 miles, which is almost all of my runs anymore (wait, what?!). So on a tip from a friend, I tried out Gary Gribbles, a running shop on Mass St. here in Lawrence. The service was awesome! They looked at the wear patterns on my current running and everyday shoes to determine the type of shoe that would work best for me. All told, I spent almost an hour trying on different shoes and running around their store (seriously).

I tried to give the new shoes a test run (see what I did there?) on my new treadmill, but I’m not sure that it will work. Mind you, it’s just new to me, as I got it free from someone moving out of my complex, so it’s possible that it’s just too old. I need to mess around with it a bit more before I give up on it. I really want a treadmill, so hopefully I can make it work.

My last bit of news for tonight is about my running progress. I recently ran in the Hospital Hill 10k in KCMO, and it was awesome! I managed to beat both of my time goals (one of them by mere seconds, but it still counts)! On top of that, I’ve been keeping up with my training for the half-marathon coming up in a couple weeks. As part of that, and to help break in my new shoes, I went to Holcom Rec Center this Sunday to try for 8 miles on the treadmill. Unfortunately people needed to use it, so I only made it through 5.5/8, but I ran 4 straight miles without stopping! The first 3.1 miles flew by in 32:27, more than 8 minutes faster than my personal 5k record! It was enough to make me add a “treadmill/indoor track” section to my personal records page.

Well, that’s it for now. This turned into a little longer of a post than I intended, but that’s cool.

Peace out.

Still ridiculously cold outside, so I went to Holcom Rec Center again to use their treadmills.

Walk/jog to Holcom Rec Center

0.44mi, 5:48min, 13:17 min/mi pace
MapMyRun workout

Treadmill

1.45mi, 20:00min, 13:47 min/mi pace
MapMyRun workout

Walk/jog home from Holcom

0.4mi, 6:35min, 15:54 min/mi pace
MapMyRun workout

Yesterday’s total

2.29mi, 32:23min, 14:08 min/mi pace