So what do I do now!?!?:

My ‘A’ race is over and Holidays are fast approaching and I can feel myself getting fatter.

I need to find a goal, that dangling carrot to keep me on the straight and narrow. I need to find a race. That sounds familiar, I am such a nut, and I need to find some race to keep me honest. This last marathon didn’t kill me; maybe I could try another, wow that would be cool. If would need to find one soon and come up with a plan. Maybe if I could find one that would run over the winter, some time in January or February. I would need a new plan, one that would have me running 3 or 4 times per week. I still need to swim and bike, I have a half Ironman in May and I can not afford to neglect my triathlon training.

I really need to run this be the spousal unit, I might need to wait a week or two before I bring it up. I have been a little selfish with my training, 4 hour long runs and recovery kind of ruin most of a day. I have to weigh the effects on the family and make sure it’s fair to all involved. Now, I know what I am about to say is probably not correct, but I think at my current level I would not need to train as much as I did to Chickamauga. I think that if I could run 5 miles on Tuesday and Thursday, 7 on Saturday and maybe alternate between 10, 14 and 16 miles on Sundays, this might be enough. The Tuesday and Thursday runs could be done at lunch so they would not affect my family duties. The other weekday lunch hours would be spent in the pool working to improve my weakest of the three disciplines.

I loved running, walking and crawling my marathon. I am proud of myself, this was a challenge, one that I never in my live thought I could do, and it has made me a better man, husband and father. I set off on my journey some 18 weeks ago as a novice marathon runner. Since then I have run when it was 105 degrees out and when it was 35 degrees out, I’ve run through rain, I’ve been chased my dogs, I’ve been run off the road by divers talking of their cell phone, I’ve been yelled at by drivers on cell phones, I’ve run during the day and at night, I’ve run 10 miles in the dark and didn’t get home until 10PM, I’ve run a lot and learned so much about myself.

Now after my marathon, I stand a little taller knowing that I can do anything, it only takes work hard and mental toughness and well, it takes all that and your wife’s OK.

I hope that you will someday have the joy of training for and running a marathon, it will change your life it you let it.

-Brian

P.S. I just got of the phone with my endocrinologist and I am going to see her on the 21st.