For a while now, I've been toying with the idea of running a marathon. Matt did one last year, Sohini did a half marathon not too long ago, and Roxanne is currently in the midst of training for one. I've recently been in a bit of an exercise kick, and I figured that I could either let it fade, or force myself to keep it up. So last weekend, I decided to stop thinking about it and just go for it, and I signed up for the National AIDS Marathon Training Program. For the next 5 1/2 months or so, I will be training for the 2005 Mardi Gras Marathon, which will take place on February 27, 2005, in New Orleans. Buddy will be training with me.

"Wha..??" you may be thinking. Yes, you heard me right: a marathon. That's 26.2 miles. This might be surprising to those of you who knew me in my missing-36-days-of-school, going-to-the-emergency-room-after-eating-a-bowl-of-cheese-puffs, spending-several-birthdays-in-the-hospital asthmatic days. And granted, this will be one of the most physically (and mentally) demanding things I will ever undertake. However, it will also be one of the most rewarding, and I'm confident I will be able to do it.

More importantly, I will also be raising money for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. I have to raise a minimum of $3000 by November 26, 2004, but I have set my fundraising goal to $4000. A lot of you will probably be hearing more details from me soon, but if you'd like to give me a head start on my funderaising, you can donate online here. Please be as generous as you can!

Training begins September 18 in Golden Gate Park, and contrary to my usual state of being, I'm actually excited to get started. So I'm starting this log both for my own benefit, and also for a way to share with you, gentle readers, the trials and tribulations of a former-asthmatic, recovering-couch-potato, first-time marathoner. Wish me luck!

Although I've been running on my own recently, I only have a vague idea of how far I've been going. My method of measuring distance was to run a route, then drive my car approximately the same route, and watch the odometer. Since this probably isn't the most accurate method, I decided to go this morning to the track on the Stanford campus and run 3 miles. Our first training run is 3 miles, and will determine which pace group we get put in, so I wanted some idea of which group I might be in. Fast forward 12 very boring laps around the track, and it turns out that it takes me 35 minutes, 20 seconds to run 3 miles. Pretty slow. Assuming I get put in the 13 minute/mile pace group (they slow you down by a minute or so,) this means that it should take me about 5 hours and 40 minutes to run a marathon. Holy poo. That's a lot of running.

Running + Playing soccer + eating only crackers = Tired Sha Sha

Some of you may know that once a week I meet with some friends to play soccer on the Stanford campus. My attendence is...less than regular, but I made sure to come today because it was the last day I'll be able to play for almost 6 months, since marathon training starts next week. I scored 7 goals! Woo! If we were actually good, and if all the goals were intentional, this feat would be that much more impressive. Just call me Sha Sha Beckham.

Buddy and I went to Runner's High in Menlo Park this morning to get swanky new running shoes. The people there were very nice, and even better, we got a 10% discount since we are training with the National AIDS Marathon program. They had me take off my shoes and took a look at how I walked, and picked out a few pairs of shoes for me to try. I ended up with a pair of Brooks Addicion 6 shoes, which are "a perfect fit for moderate to severe overpronators." Just call me The Overpronator. They also feature "Carbon rubber outsole, HPR heel strike, and Crumple Zone," whatever that means. We also got water bottles and belts, which will be required once we hit 5 miles. Finally, I'm trying out a pair of fancy running socks which have "CoolMax" technology that is supposed to keep my feet nice and dry. Since when do socks have technology? We truly do live in the 21st century!

Now that I'm properly equipped, all I have to do is start running! No problem. It's easy riding from here on out.

As you can see, I've added a new running log section to this site. I'm using a database (come on, I'm a geek!) to store my running progress. However, I've had some confusion lately over what distances I'm actually running. As I said before, the method I used before was to drive my car along a route, and check the odometer. This seemed to work pretty well, but Scott suggested Mapquest as a more accurate method. Woo!

This is where the confusion comes in. Last weekend, I ran 3 miles around the Stanford campus track and timed myself. Since it's a track, I know I ran exactly 3 miles, and I calculated my average mile time at 11 minutes, 46 seconds. Slow, but okay. However, using Mapquest, I calculated my usual morning running route at 4.03 miles. This morning, I ran that route in 40 minutes. So that comes out to 9 minutes, 55 seconds per mile. Much better. But is it really possible that I ran 1 minute and 51 seconds faster per mile? I could feel that I was running faster than usual this morning, and I did feel on Saturday that I was running slower than usual, but that seems like a pretty big difference. Is Mapquest lying to me? I would like to be able to run a sub-5 hour marathon, but now I'm just confused. Come Saturday, I guess I will see for sure how fast I am actually running.

So today I'm starting to think that I can't count. I have this nagging feeling that when I do my morning run, I'm only running 4 times around the park rather than 5. There are a couple reasons for this. First, when I did my run this morning, as I finished up what I thought was my 5th lap, I suddenly got the feeling that I had only done 4. So I kept going for a bit, but my body *felt* like I had done 5, so I eventually turned around and went back, a bit confused. Also, if I were only running 4 times around, my mile time would be closer to the time I calculated when I ran around the track.

But is it really possible that I had miscounted to 5 all three times I've done this route? Erm, don't answer that.

I had wanted to rest tomorrow, but I think I'm going to have to run again, and try *really really* hard to accurately count to 5 to settle things once and for all. I might have to resort to using the lap counter on my "swanky" new watch. (Incidentally, having found that link, I just realized that Walmart.com has the watch for $10 less than what I paid for mine... doh.)

So if it wasn't clear, that was supposed to be The Count from Sesame Street.

Anyway, it turns out that I can indeed count to 5! Woohoo! This morning I put 5 pieces of dog food in my pocket when I started my run, and dropped one after each lap to make sure I was running around the park 5 times. My time for (what Mapquest says is) the 4.03 miles was 39 minutes, 12 seconds.

I think I need to be careful, though, because I think I'm starting to run a bit faster than my comfort pace. Although I feel pretty good running that pace for 4 miles, I don't think I could keep it up. If I can be put in the 11 minute pace group on Saturday (meaning I ran 10 minute miles) that would be pretty cool, since this would mean a sub-5 hour marathon, but I would be happy with 12, too.

Rest day tomorrow yay!

I would like to say a huge thank you to Becky for being my very first marathon donor! Woohoo! You rock, Becky!

Today was our first day of training in Golden Gate Park. I picked up Buddy on the way, and we got horribly lost trying to find the run site. We eventually got there with about 5 minutes to spare. They had us do a 3-mile run, which they used to put us in our pace groups. I ran it in 31:03, which put me in the 11:30 minute/mile pace group (they slow you down a minute or two), named the "Kathy Switzer" group. I assume that Kathy Switzer is some famous runner, and not just our organizer's mom or something. This time is about what I expected, and should mean a 5-hour marathon.

My group was small and kind of quiet, so I was trying to be friendly and introducing myself to everyone and chatting. Before I knew what was happening, I was somehow elected the pace group leader, despite telling Buddy several times that I would do everything in my power not to be one. (They have to show up 15-minutes earlier than everyone else. Sorry Buddy!) I hope I don't get them all lost, seeing as I don't know San Francisco at all. Whee!

Edit: Some quick Googling reveals that Kathy Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. This was before women were officially allowed to run the race, so she obtained her number by entering as "K. Switzer." In a much-publicized event, race officials tried to tear her number off her shirt before being clocked by her boyfriend. Kathy Switzer rules!

Buddy was nice enough to lend me his talking pedometer. After getting over the fact that it was in metric units, and vowing to never ever use its "music" feature, I decided to use it yesterday to try once more to measure the distance of my morning run. You input your stride distance and it counts the number of steps you make to measure distance. I brought a tape measure outside, stepped in a puddle of water, ran a bit, and measured the distance between footsteps. After doing a quick inches to centimeters conversion in my head (you already know that this is going to go badly), I set my stride distance in the pedometer, and off I went.

About 40 minutes later, I came back to my computer to do the km to miles conversion. The first thing I realized is that my inches to centimeters conversion was off (stupid head), so my stride distance was off. Fortunately, I still had the number of steps, so I recalculated the distance. The pedomter claims that the distance is 3.8 miles, which is more in-line with my 10:20-10:30 mile time. So Mapquest lied, but only by about .2 miles. Woo!

The AIDS Marathon website is puzzlingly slow at updating our fundraising total. You would think that online donations should show up immediately, but it has been taking anywhere from 3-6 days for each donation to come through. However, today a whole mess o' donations showed up, and I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone. I really appreciate your support! Things on the fundraising front are certainly looking up.

Since I was in Portland for my cousin's wedding, I missed our first pace group run. My very capable Assistant Pace Group Leader, Sahara, led the group in my absence, and from what I hear, it went very well.

In lieu of the 4-mile group run, I did a 4-mile solo run along the Willamette River in Portland. It was an okay run -- pretty hot, but I made it without much trouble. It was at least a nice change of scenery from running laps around the park at home.