This should be a fun little feature on The Blog Channel. I’ll try to provide you with periodic examples of how you can stay fit and in shape. This entry is from the popular “Sit and Be Fit” series. Feel the burn!

In a few hours, Wendy and I will head outside for her final 30 minute run of the Couch to 5k program. She never thought she’d do it, but I always knew she would. I’m looking forward to watching her smile grow the closer we get to the end of the run, which should cover about 2.25 miles. Of course, I’m also looking forward to our date afterward as we celebrate her achievement!

First, some background. I never actually started running with long races like this in mind. I just started running because

1. I thought running a 5k seemed like a novel idea, and
2. Breathing heavy 30 seconds into a game of hide and seek with the kids got old.

Anyway, as those of you know who have followed my blog, I found this program called Couch to 5k, and then another one called One Hour Runner, and at some point during a 6 mile run I decided to try to run 10 miles and I did. That’s when I realized that a half marathon was probably within reach and so I started following this program by Hal Higdon (who is apparently a pretty big deal, but I didn’t know that at the time) in hopes of running the Thunder Road Half Marathon on Dec. 13.

In the 8 months I’ve been running, I can honestly say I’ve only had 2 negative experiences. The first was when I bought my Garmin Forerunner 305. The Garmin is great, but that’s when I realized that my Nike+ sportband wasn’t measuring my runs as accurately as I had thought. Seems the Nike+ had been giving me as much as a quarter to a half mile extra distance which made my pace times appear to be quicker than they actually were. Bottom line: in order to run my first half under 2 hours, I was going to run around a 9:10/mile pace which I thought I could do according to my Nike+ runs, but the Garmin was more accurate and told a different story. To sum up in a word: crap! The likelihood of me breaking 2 hours looked a bit slimmer.

The second bad experience was 2 Saturdays before the race when I pulled up with what was either a cramp or a sign of overtraining in my left calf. I was just at the end of a 12.25 mile run and it hurt for a couple of days. I iced it, rested some, really cut down my mileage for 2 weeks before the race and still wasn’t sure what would happen. Now, with all that said, onto the race. Continue reading