My 100th Blog Post!

When I started this blog on January 1, 2007, I never imagined that I'd stick to it for more than two years and 100 posts, but it's been 25 months today and THIS is my 100th post! I was thinking of throwing a party for my loyal readers, but you're spread out all over the country, so I hope you'll settle for a

BIG THANK YOU

for sticking with me through all of my boring updates and weak attempts at humor. I'll never be as funny as Steve, as interesting as Krista, as motivated as Carol, as fit as Cristen (my sister), or as HOT as Amy (my wife), but you still come here to support me so I must be doing something right. THANK YOU!

In addition to some races ranging from 2 miles to 10 kilometers, I've also managed to complete a half marathon (May 2007), a sprint triathlon (September 2007), a full marathon (May 2008), and the 203 mile Ragnar Relay Great River (August 2008).

I'm currently training for the LaCrosse Marathon on May 3, 2009. What I haven't told you yet is that I've been giving serious consideration to running the Madison Half Marathon only 3 weeks later on May 24th. After doing one marathon last summer and loving it, I've been saying that I want to do something "bigger" this season, so this may be just the ticket. I don't think I'd be able to recover enough in 3 weeks to do another full marathon, but doing a half seems do-able. Call me crazy, but I also think I could also PR the half only 3 weeks after I PR the full 26.2. That's the plan, anyway. We'll see if I have the guts to register for both of them!

The rest of my plans for this season are the 5 mile Crazylegs Classic on April 25th, at least 1 sprint triathlon, the Ragnar Relay Great River again in August, and MAYBE another full marathon sometime between August and December. The ones that are on my radar are Milwaukee Lakefront (10/4), Chicago (10/11) or Las Vegas (early December). I've found that I don't care so much for anything less than 5 miles these days, so I doubt I'll do any 5K races or shorter this year unless I get an itch to set a PR.

January was a good month. I "officially" started my 16 weeks of marathon training on the 5th, and here are my totals for the month:

Run: 5h 47m 28s  - 30.02 Mi
Bike: 2h 16m 26s  - 33.6 Mi
Strength: 1h 54m  (1142 push ups)

It's been a while since I've run every mile that I planned in a month, but I did it in January. Then, considering that I haven't been on my bike since 9/15/07, I'm very happy that I found the motivation to buy a new trainer and to log just over 33 miles. Every mile on the bike will pay off when it comes time to start thinking about a triathlon, plus I'm sure they are helping with my marathon training and my weight loss.

I'm almost finished with week 3 of the 6 week Hundred Push Ups Challenge (http://hundredpushups.com), and I'm very pleased with my progress. When I started, I could only do 35 good form push ups. After doing only 6 workouts in 2 weeks, I bumped that up to 59! In about 3 more weeks I SHOULD be able to do 100 good form push ups. I'm confident that I'll get there, and I'm getting anxious to start the Two Hundres Sit Ups Challenge (http://twohundredsitups.com).

When I started my marathon training in early January, I decided that I wanted to lose 18 pounds by race day on May 3rd. So far so good, as I've lost 9 pounds since January 5th, putting me WAY ahead of schedule. I had a little set-back this week, though, because we went out to Samba Brazilian Grill on Friday night with 3 other couples and I over-indulged on both the meat and the drinks, but I'll get back on track this week.

Whew! All the pressure of writing my 100th post is finally GONE. I'll try not to make you wait as long for #101.