For the next 18 weeks, my Friday blog posts will be on training for the Hartford Marathon. First, I love the Hartford Marathon Foundation. I’ve done many races and find their races to be the best organized and most enjoyable. I can’t wait to run Hartford.
To tie this into Connecticut law, if you are at an HMF event, the voice you hear announcing is often that of Judge Shluger.
This week I took the first of many steps that will end with a 26 mile 385 yard victory lap through Hartford, East Hartford, and South Windsor. With any luck, I’ll be running under the Arch in Bushnell Park at about 12:15 on October 15th. That’s the destination.
The journey is about 500 miles of running and another 300 miles cross training on a bike.
Hartford will be my second marathon. I completed the 2010 Vermont City Marathon in 4 hours and 49 minutes. At the time, I had been running for a year.
My recent race times suggest that I should be able to best my Vermont City time by about a half hour.
This year, I’m training with the Hartford Marathon Foundation in Glastonbury. Starting next week, I’ll be running with a group early on Saturday mornings. I’m doing this in part because solo long runs of 14, 15, 16, 18, and 20 miles get really boring. I’m really looking forward to starting this group.
For now, I’m just trying to maintain a base. I’m coming off training for and running the Amica Iron Horse half marathon on June 5th. This week my runs are easy. I did 3 miles on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Tomorrow, I’ll run 7 miles. These distances are very short compared to what I’ll be running in the peak of my training which will be 5,10,5, 20.
I’m going to cut myself some slack in this training. Last time, I hit every run on the schedule. This time, I understand that is probably an unrealistic goal. Namely because last August, I became a father for the first time. Hence, I’m constantly struggling to balance a law practice, family, and working out. My first priority is to my family, my second to my clients, and third to my workouts.
For example, tomorrow morning, I’ll run after taking my daughter to get bagels so that my wife can catch some extra sleep and before I have to do work as a foreclosure committee in Hartford at 10:00 am. Following the committee work, it’s off to have family pictures taken by the fabulous Chion Wolf.
I’ll try and keep this entertaining and include as many pictures as I can. Each run is an adventure and a small step toward a larger goal.
When I cross the finish line, I’ll be wearing a really ugly Dana Farber singlet. As part of my journey, I have a goal of raising $500 to fight cancer. Any donation you could make would be greatly appreciated. A dollar a mile would be a donation of $26.20 and that would be awesome. If you’re interested click here.