A New Goal!

I waited a full 20 minutes beyond the official opening of registration (noon today) to register for the Marine Corps Historic Half Marathon, taking place in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in May 2008. I've been waiting for this for months. At last I have a new goal. I won't start training for the race right now, obviously, but when the time comes (February) I plan on stepping things up a notch and using Hal Higdon's Intermediate Half training program. Now that I know I can do a half marathon, I want to improve my half marathon. I calculated that in order to run a sub-2:00 half, I need to average 9:09 a mile. I believe that is entirely within my reach. Heck, I averaged 9:09/mile on my ten-mile training run before the Detroit race.

In other news, I was a bit disgruntled this week at Weight Watchers because for the second week in a row I posted a substantial gain. I know I shouldn't dwell on it too much but it's all my fault. I overate, ate poor-quality food, and didn't exercise as much. I hate getting set back because then I have to re-lose weight I already lost. Now I'm back to where I was at the beginning of September. Thus, I've recommitted myself to tracking my points and making Weight Watchers recipes for dinner. Dinner is most often my downfall. I can control what I eat for breakfast and lunch extremely well but dinnertime can be hazardous. Plenty of times we're sitting around watching TV or something and I look at the clock, it's 8:00, and we haven't had dinner, and I say, "I don't want to cook...let's just go out/order pizza."

On a more positive note, I was able to get out this morning for an easy 5K run. I think the days I spent babying my back this week helped and I completed the run without any pain and I feel fine now. I was so antsy from not running for three days. It was driving me crazy. I managed to do some low-impact cardio at the gym, but my body was like, "I NEED TO RUN!" There is something about the act of running, the sensations I experience while running, that just aren't there when I do other forms of cardio. Thus, this morning's run felt so good.