It's Been A Long Time...and Going Whole Hog

Well, hello there loyal readers. Aw, c'mon, I know there are a couple of you out there that have just been dying to see what would happen next.

It's been a LONG while since I've posted, and now that the holidays are over, hopefully things will fall back to a more normal rhythm and I'll be posting more.

Speaking of the holidays, I'm glad they're over, but I did have a great time with my sister visiting for the better part of a week. It's always nice to hang out with her, and we get to do it all too infrequently. She's my little sister, but she's a big inspiration. As I think I've said before (it's been so long since I posted that I can't even remember what I've written. Never mind that I can't be bothered to actually go back and read my old posts) she's basically the main reason I started running. Yeah, yeah, it was to get in shape (I've stalled a bit at the 35 pounds lost point), but it was also because I'm so proud of her, and I've seen and heard about all the hard work she's done, and in some way I wanted to be a little bit a part of it. Believe me, it's not for the glory of slogging through 10 minute miles sometimes (ok, ONE time) in the rain and slightly above freezing temperature during which I experienced my first chafing (OUCH). But I have gotten in a bit better shape, so that's a plus. One of my resolutions this year is to actually lose 15 more pounds to get down to the 2 bill mark.

Anyway, so I got a chance to run once with my sis while she was here, and it was great. She was a little rough on me (ok, she claims that she let me set the pace, but we're both a little competitive, and I wanted to show her I wasn't a total wuss) but it was good. I'm sure she could have left me in the dust had she wanted to, but she was gracious enough to stick with me.

And about the "Going Whole Hog" thing. It's more like half hog, really. I've decided that I'm going to run the Flying Pig Half Marathon in Cincinnatti in May. I know it may be a bit of a stretch going from running a 5k to a half marathon, but so what. As my sister likes to say, she went from not running to running a marathon, so it can be done. Initially I was going to run one of the legs on a relay team, but my said "You should just run the half marathon." so that's what I'm going to do. Official training starts at the beginning of February, so I'll be sure to blog all the wonderful training notes here. In the interest of training, and also because running in the cold rain and snow is somewhat of a pain, we've purchased a treadmill to aid the training/getting in shape efforts. I've gotta' say it's boring, but much better than chafing! I also picked up a Garmin 201 Forerunner to help out with pacing and training, and it's really cool. Kicked my virtual training partners ass on my long run the other day!

Oh, and did I mention that my sister is going to fly back so we can run the Pig together? And by together I mean that we'll be running the same race at the same time, but I'm sure she'll WAY kick my ass.

Later, my little Padawans.

Jedi Dad out.