Is anyone still out there?

Well, in an effort to document a journey towards my 3rd marathon and trying to break the 4 hour mark, I think I'll blog again to track workouts and stay motivated. Today I should be embarking on the Novice 1, Hal Higdon plan.

If anyone still has an RSS feed set on this site (Kirk?, Allison?, Melissa?, Tosha?) then you'll see this post and I HOPE, track your own personal workout endeavors. I miss connecting and hearing about stupid exercises you put yourselves through.

Because I need to know my pace, in order to beat the 4 hour mark (and because I'm OCD let's use 3:58 to give some extra buffer), I need to run about a 9:04 pace. That would be exactly 3:57:43. Which is almost exactly 10 minutes faster than my last marathon (4:07:46, 9:27 pace), where I was in better shape heading into the marathon training (albeit 7 lbs heavier). Back then, I was in Mountain Conditioning so I was definitely stronger in the legs, and less prone to injuries.

I'm definitely worried about ramping up my strength training while trying to run 4 days a week. This is going to be a fun 18 weeks, throughout a busy summer working on the Yahoo! integration work, where I am already limited on time. I hope this forces me to find work-life balance again...