30 Days To Go!

Holy cow, just one month to go! This weekend we are finally telling the boys by having them do a scavenger hunt to find an invitation to Mickey’s Halloween Party. I can’t wait to see their reactions. Just the other day DS4 asked why we haven’t been to WDW yet since “all of my friends have”.

We’ve been waiting to tell them because DS3 had his 1-year follow-up MRI, CT, and labwork scheduled for last week. During his Cancer treatment last year there were many times we had planned to do something fun but had to cancel, and the disappointment was unbearable. So we wanted to know the latest possible results before telling them about Disney. Well, the results are in… HALLELUJAH WE ARE STILL CANCER-FREE!

In running news, I finished my first half marathon last weekend in 2:14. My goal was 2:30, so I “won my race” as far as I care. And that’s what I told the boys. Several times now, DS4 has come up to me saying “Daddy, I’m so happy you won your race.” Now that I have that behind me, I can enjoy the Wine & Dine at a leisurely pace and not feel the need to push for a good time.

In addition to the half marathon, I also ran a 5k the day before, as part of the “Sky High Challenge”. I figured this would be a good test for the Wine & Dine, when I’ll be running a 10k on Saturday and a half marathon on Sunday. I set a personal 5k record with a time of 25:39 and I finished 12th (out of 84) in the 30-34 male division!

And here is what greeted me at the door when I returned from the half marathon. I love those boys!

I’m sure that to most of you, the idea of running a half marathon sounds impossible. But hear me out. I just started running less than a year ago. My first run was a little more than a mile, I took 6 walk breaks, and I finished in 23 minutes. A few months later I could run 4 miles in 45 minutes while only taking 2 walk breaks. After 6 months I ran my first 10k (6.2 miles) and now after 11 months I finished my first half marathon (13.1 miles). During that time, I missed 40 runs out of the 150 on my schedule. Sometimes I was too busy, or I was sick, or was taking “paternity leave”, or I was depressed. Sometimes I was just feeling lazy. But I never gave up on my big goal, and I finally reached it despite the many small failures along the way.

You can reach your goal too; you just need to find the right motivation. For me, I started running to relieve stress, but also to lose a few pounds. But what has really kept me going over the long run has been tracking my progress in a spreadsheet. I’ve included a screenshot of one of my history graphs below. Seeing my running history like this has helped to keep me motivated because I can visualize my improvement. Sometimes it is running farther, or at a faster pace, or just taking fewer walk breaks.

If you have never run before, I encourage you to try out Jeff Galloway’s “run walk run” method with the goal of finishing a 5k in 8-10 weeks. It is how I started out, and it helped me feel like I was improving every time I went running. http://www.jeffgalloway.com/training/run-walk/

Thanks for reading!