Day 14

Hello All,

Today was my "long" run. I think "long run" is such a relative term, for some of us it's a 5 miler, or less. Others, it's 15 miles +. The crazy endurance guy I mentioned on Day 12, Dean Karnazes, says he usually tries to fit in a marathon before breakfast. Ha!!

At any rate, I've been following a suggest mileage chart for "novice" level folks wanting to do a half marathon. It was cool for the first week, then I thought, "since when do I follow conventional training methods??" Following a linear based training program/chart may work for some, it just ain't for me. These approaches to training don't take into account so many factors, including the fact that I practice yoga, meditation and all the inner work that I've done. Even though I'm considered "novice" by many standards, yet in many ways I'm not. My body/mind has no problem adapting to the mileage, yet I wanted to ensure that I wasn't taking on too much too soon. So today I decided to just see what would happen if I went "off the chart" and into some uncharted territory. Well, actually it's charted territory within me, I just haven't been there in running mode for a long time.

Rather than the scheduled 4 mile run, Christian and I left the house with no particular route in mind and I just had the idea we would end up at a park a couple miles from our home. So, off we went with our water bottles, my "Ultimate"-brand hydration pack, his snacks and toys and just headed north.

It felt great to go with no plan and no mileage in mind. I prefer to train for time rather than miles anyway. Training for miles creates too much attachment, pressure, and at the end of the day it's not all that relevant anyway.

We ended up running for around 55 minutes, snaking our way around the side streets of Brownsburg and then spending some time at the park. After which we ran home, an additional 20 minutes of running.

There you have it, our longest run this year, an hour and fifteen minutes. Again, not long for some of you, yet a half hour longer than our previous longest run.

The cool thing is, we could have gone longer were it not dinner time. So, I'm thinking the half marathon is very do-able and I've actually set my sites on something which will really put me to the test, and put my "Project: Bridging the Wellness Gap" to the test. I'll clue you all in very soon.

Thanks for reading.

Peace,

Chris