Day 1 - A fools errand?

I haven't posted in awhile mostly because I haven't really been running. I dabbled. I ran the Salida Half Marathon this June. Ill advised. I did the least amount of training one could do without finishing being considered a miracle. I did finish, I felt mostly ok. The most I ran three months before was 10 miles, on the road, super slow.

The other day I made a deal with myself that I would run a race this fall. To get to that point I am starting my training today and my goal is to stick to it and really do it. I've followed training programs before and by followed I mean "followed". I was terrible at sticking to the mileage, the pattern of running. The one time I did it, really did it, was when I trained for my first marathon back in 2008. 11 years ago to today; day 1.

I have a few goals.

1. Stick to the program as close as I can to make sure I get the milage in per week and honor the pace days, rest days, and days run in a row. For reference I'm going to use the Hal Higdon Novice 2 program.

Week 1 looks like this:
Monday     Tuesday     Wednesday     Thursday     Friday     Saturday     Sunday     Total
    rest             3mi          5mi pace           3mi            rest          8mi            cross       19mi


2. Report out on it. I probably won't post every day, but I will do my best to post once a week with an update on how well I'm staying on track.

3. Run a sub 4hr marathon. This one may not happen at the end of the 18 weeks. I haven't found a marathon that quite matches up There's a half thats pretty close so I may got for a sub 2hr half and use that to spring into a marathon within that month.

4. Get the courage to do another 50miler. I still want to get to at least one 100 miler in my life. To feel confident doing that I need to better my 50miler times. So I'd like to commit to signing up for a 50 miler by the end of this training.

I get inspired by reading about running. I just finished Peter Sagel's book "The Incomplete Book of Running". I'm going to start "What I Talk When I Talk About Running" by Haruki Murakami. I followed a lot of the Western States tracking this past weekend so I think I've got a good dose of inspiration.

So today is Day 1. The training program is 18 weeks. That's 126 days. I already messed up the schedule, today is a rest day, but I had time when I got home after work so I ran 3ish miles. I may look at switching rest days up.