running in Grenada

Well, here I am in Grenada - the southern most island in the Caribbean chain. I live on my sailboat with my wife and cat. Not much sailing right now as we are preparing the boat for living in the boat yard for about 16 months while we go back and work and take care of new grand baby coming in November. So . . .'

Might as well get running again!

I used to run quite a bit. Then I'd stop. Then I'd train again. Went like that for years. Running was always there or just over the horizon. Now that I'm sneaking up on 60 I thought I'd make one more push to do what I've not done yet. Run a marathon. I've been a spectator to several Chicago Marathons watching my daughter and her husband run them. It looks awful. I want to feel awful too!

But, it's like one of those things that you can't unthink. This sailing adventure is like that. We just couldn't un-think the idea that we could sail from Chicago to the Caribbean. You can. We did. Now I think I can run a marathon. I can't un-think it. So I'm starting to train.

Slowly.

No. Slower.

I started by running 5 minutes and then run/walk back. That was about 4 weeks ago. Now I'm running 15 minutes outbound and am nearly running all the way back. it is VERY hilly here which is probably good training but a little frustrating as well. My daughter and I call this 'moving the stick'. One time I began to train while we were in Michigan on vacation. I couldn't run very far but I dropped a stick at my far point. Each day I'd pick up the stick on my way by and drop it further down the road hence - 'moving the stick'. Some days the stick didn't move very far and, OK, some days I just kicked it once and started walking but as long as you try to move it forward a little bit you're distance increases.

But now I'm 59 and haven' run seriously in 4-5 years. I'm going to go in for a heart check soon (medical care is excellent and cheap in Grenada) before I run into trouble. My reading shows that no one dies from running a marathon unless they already had undetected heart problems. So...there. I already have high blood pressure and take some pills for it. I'm hoping that via this training and diet (I'm probably around 195 right now but hope to get down to 180-185 by race time) I can lower my blood pressure naturally and get off the pills. This can be done.

So come back often and see how WE are doing. Daughter, Leah, will be training with me and will also be my coach. She is a master at designing training schedules...but she's tough too!