Here I go!

I am blatently stealing a friend's idea (thanks Cat!) to keep a blog while I train for my 3rd marathon.

This year, instead of running the NYC marathon, I will be heading back to my MN roots, and running the Twin Cities Medtronic Marathon on October 7.

My training officially kicks off June 4. Between now and then I'm just concentrating on maintaining my 25-ish mile per week base. I can say I feel more confident in my running now than I did before my previous two marathons!

My previous times were 4:24 for my first in 2005, and 3:58 last year. I do have that elusive BQ on my mind, so I want to train with that as my most ambitious goal (I need to hit 3:40). I'm planning on following Hal Higdon's Advanced-I training plan. I'm not worried about the total mileage, since my base is strong right now, but will admit the intensity is a little daunting. I chose this plan over the Intermediate plans because of the incorporation of speed workouts. My back-up plan, if my body tells me this one is too excruciating, will be to adapt the Intermediate plan a bit to include some speedwork.

So my plan is to log my workouts, both in advance and report on how they went. It will be completely run-centric (well, perhaps a bit of nutrition, strength training, and the woes of juggling school, running, and a social life thrown in there ;) ) in hopes of getting myself in the mindset to train the best I can!