Running in Tennis Sneakers

I registered for the Chicago Marathon lottery this week.  I’ve had this race on the radar for a while but of course decided to wait until they made it a lottery registration system before deciding to pull the trigger.  I am usually not a “big marathon” kind of guy, and usually prefer races that are around or under the 10,000 runner mark.  But for a big race Chicago has a reputation for being logistically easy and a fast course so I am putting my big-race bias aside and will see if I can get in.

I love Fall marathons and usually try and run 2 or 3 in the Fall.  Because Chicago is kind of notorious for having weird weather it is an especially prudent move to have a back up race, so I am considering signing up for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon as well, since that is supposed to be a great race as well and hits my sweet spot for marathon size.  That way I can knock of IL and IN from the 50 state map.  And I may still throw the Philadelphia Marathon in there, just because it’s a bad idea.

When I ran my first marathon, I didn’t really have any long term goals other than to run my first marathon.  My main motivation for running was to lose weight and gain fitness for tennis.  A lot has changed since then – my sport of choice has long since changed from tennis to distance running (being an obsessive compulsive personality that likes to go off by himself gels perfectly with the solitary hours on the road that are the hallmark of the psychopath marathoner).   And I have made a lot of changes in regards to my nutrition. But I still have goals dammit, primarily three at this point, which I am listing below:

(1) Achieve/Maintain a high level of fitness

The first thing on the list I hold in a different league than the next two.  It is the most fundamental part of the whole running thing for me and is really more of a lifestyle paradigm than a goal achievement.  By attaining a high level of fitness through distance running the rest of the things in my life become easier.  Plus I will hopefully live a longer and more fruitful life, enabling me to annoy the people I love much longer than if I was sedentary.

(2) Running a marathon in every state

This is one of those stupid yet kind of cool things that serial marathoners do.  Putting this on the list at least ensures that I have a long term outlook, since my time and monetary resources don’t lend themselves to me banging out all 50 states in a year.  It also happens to be a very cool way to see other locations and sample some of the races that runners across the country brag about.  So far I am up to 23 marathons in 12 states so I still have a long way to go.

(3) Qualify for the Boston Marathon

This is the loftiest goal by far.  I am not gifted with natural born speed, and my fastest marathon to date still leaves me about 20 minutes from my Boston qualifying time.  However, with some training tweaks and nutritional changes I don’t think it’s completely off the table for me either.  The historical significance this race holds coupled with the national sentiment of recent events makes it worthy of a stretch goal.

I had all but let this thing wither and die on the vine.  Alas, social media killed the once thriving world of blogging.  Well, most of it anyway.  When I went to revive this thing and looked at the blog roll I used to keep, most of those bloggers have been dormant since 2010, and I’m sure they are not coming back.  But I had already purchased my domain years ago, and had a fair amount of stuff (albeit old) on the old blogpost site.  So I’m moving it over to WordPress and reviving it, if only to be accountable to myself.  It is still focused on my main passion of marathoning, with a small dose of nutrition thrown in, since I think that is what is going to have me reaching my future running goals.