I get these hare-brained ideas from time to time. I’ll talk about the tattoos in a separate post (and these two will likely intersect later, but all in due course). For now, though, last night officially marked my kickoff to running a marathon before I turn 42.

I signed up for the Frontrunners clinic, and last night was the first “workout” session. I got the chance to meet up with some really great people, got introduced to Kristin, who will be my pace leader, and gained a pile of information about how this is going to work for the next several months while I prepare to run a rather long way.

I’ve talked a bit before about running, and how I got back into it upon my return to the army in 2011. Over that time, my pace has been increasing, as has been my distance. Current bests right now are 1:36 for a half marathon, just over 44 mins for a 10k, and 20:17 for a 5k. Compare that to only being able to sputter through 2.5k at 7:30/km when I first started, I’m quite proud of where I’ve ended up.

Last night’s run went great. I placed myself near the front of the pack, had some good conversations with a couple of people, and really barely cracked a sweat with a 7:08 average pace (we were averaging about 6:00 while underway, but there were obligatory photo stops, catch-up points, street crossings, etc). The run took us from the downtown Frontrunners through the edge of Beacon Hill Park, along Dallas Road, before hooking back down Richmond to the store.

Given my recent IT band pain, I was a little nervous about stepping off and running into difficulties along the way, but the slow pace really did it for me. I didn’t have a hint of soreness at all, and was essentially able to nose-breathe through the whole affair.

The training plan looks good – it’s very similar in scope to the plan I did for my half-marathons, though it starts up a couple of miles on the long runs from where I am. I can already feel my self-competitiveness kicking in, so it’s going to take all the restraint in the world to really slow down these long runs. The first one is 14km on Saturday. I also have to pay a little attention to what’s going on with the schedule over the coming weeks as I won’t be at some of the distance runs due to being away (and in snowy climes, which is going to also present a different challenge).

So here we go again. More zaniness. Can’t wait to see where this takes me.