Sometimes It's Just Not in the Stars!

Sometimes the best laid plans go awry. In July, I began in earnest the training for my 11th marathon—Marine Corps. I and a group of my friends (some training for Chicago, some for the OBX Marathon, and the rest for Marine Corps) began following the F.I.R.S.T. marathon training plan. The plan consists of 3 tough weekly runs (speed, tempo, long) and 2 days of aerobic cross-training. All started well for me. The training was hard, especially in the July North Carolina heat and humidity, but we were troopers and hung in there.

I registered for the marathon before I decided to begin the 6-month personal training and nutrition consultant certification program I'm currently in. Of course, at the time, I thought I was Superman and figured I could handle school and training. Well, like I said earlier, "Sometimes the best laid plans go awry." During the first month of the certification program I could hardly move! Each day (four days a week) consisted of 2.5 hrs of lecture and 2 hours of working out in the gym. These workouts were above and beyond my marathon training. I still thought I was Superman and was hanging in there with all the required marathon training workouts. Well, the body can only take so much before it says, "Whoa, Dude! What are you doing?!" Basically I was overtrained. I was slowing down and getting know where fast.

To back up just a bit—earlier this year, I figured out that even though I'm 44, I could use the Boston qualifying time for 45-year-olds because of when my birthday fell. So, the big plan was to run Marine Corps in 3:30, qualify for Boston 2010, and set a PR as well. I have a couple of friends running Boston 2010 and my goal was to join them.

Back to being overtrained—about a month ago, once I realized a PR and a BQ were not in the cards, I decided to bow out of the race. You see (as many of you can attest to)being laid off, having a family of 5, and living on one income (my wife's) while in school full-time, can be quite a challenge. We're managing, but taking a trip to DC to run a marathon (just to run it) and not achieve a monumental goal, didn't seem fair to the family.

I'm only 44. There are many more marathons in my future and I'll get to Boston one day. While being a little depressed on the day of the race, I realized how fortunate I am. I have a loving family who is fully supportive of my life-transition and career change. What more could I ask for!

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PS: Dena (Chicago), Andy (Marine Corps), and Mike (Marine Corps)—my training buddies—all set PR's! Lisa is about to run the OBX Marathon and I have no doubt she'll blow away her marathon too!

Turning Lemons Into Lemonade

I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason and the often times things that may appear on the surface to be unrelated are often connected in some way. Kind of like meeting a stranger in the airport only to discover you both know the same person. I'm not sure who first coined the expression "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade," but he/she was a wise soul. I was given a big ole lemon back in February when I was laid off from my job of 13 years as a writer/editor at an educational publishing company. To make matters worse, even though they let me go due to the economy (along with 14 others), they still held me to a non-compete agreement I had signed many years ago. So, basically I'm not able to work in my field for 18 months. I've been told I would probably win if I took them to court over the issue, but it took most of my funds just to find that out.

Back in 1997 something made me decide to run a marathon. My first marathon—New York City. A few years later in 2001, I was diagnosed with Colitis. It was my running that helped me to recover from a colitis-related surgery in 2002. If I had not had my running and had not set a goal to run the Nashville Marathon 8 months after my surgery, I doubt I would have recovered as quickly as I did. That marathon goal also led me to my running group which has been a wonderful source of support and inspiration. I also believe that my fitness and running have been a big part of my remission from my colitis for most of the past 5 years. A running injury about 3 years ago led me to the gym for strength training while not being able to run for 3 months. This led me into an entirely new world of overall fitness and strength training.

My increased knowledge of running and fitness as well as my love of writing, led me to create this blog—RunnerDude's Blog. You guys have helped push the blog up to #11 on the Top21RunningSites site. THANKS! The blog gets hundreds of readers every week from all over the country and the world—Ireland, Finland, Scotland, Italy, Brazil, Australia, India, Greece, etc. Writing for the blog has really opened my eyes to something—I love researching, reading about, and sharing my running and fitness knowledge with others.

Here comes the lemonade part....losing my job was a huge blow, both to my confidence and to my sense of self, but it has opened up an entirely new opportunity. The past 10 years has been full of one fitness/running related event leading into another with me loving and growing from each. It finally dawned on me that maybe I need to take my life into a new direction—one in which I could combine my love of writing, teaching, running and fitness. In July I'm getting my RRCA running coach certification and then I'm entering a 6-month diploma program with NPTI (National Personal Training Institute) to become a personal trainer and nutrition consultant. My dream is to combine coaching runners, personal training, life coaching, and nutrition consulting into a business to help others on their way to becoming fitter individuals.

I'm both scared to death and excited about what lies ahead. I'd love to hear from anyone who's made similar transitions.