A Tale of Two Times: Post BRM recap

Gathering for the start of the Blue Ridge Marathon

On Saturday, April 22nd I completed my second marathon, the Foot Levelers Blue Ridge Marathon in Roanoke, Virginia. The BRM's claim to fame is that it is America's toughest road race due to 7,430 feet of elevation change over the course of the route. Now that I have completed it, I have to say any descriptions they provide about the hills and elevation change pale in comparison to what the actual experience is. As I noted on social media after completing the run, it was "stupid hard". Prior to the event, I was hopeful that my training had put me in a position to improve on the time from my first marathon. How did I do? Read on to find out.

Marathon Training plan #2 complete

Graph of average speed for my runs with an Excel generated trendline.

When I launched this new blog a few days ago, I mentioned on social media that it really did not make sense since I barely have time to get done the things I'm already doing, so adding a new blog may not be the smartest move. In any case, wanted to squeeze in a quick post before the weekend as I will be rather busy running the Foot Leveler's Blue Ridge Marathon. At this point, I have completed my marathon training plan for this marathon and just wanted to provide a quick recap.

The plan started back on January 3rd as I followed a 16-week plan. It was structured on an intermediate plan from Jeff Gaudette and RunnersConnect. I got hooked up with Gaudette via his plans in the Runkeeper app. Unfortunately, Runkeeper made some changes to their app so I could not use his plans any longer. I had used them previously for a 10K in March 2016 and then my first half marathon in August 2016. That actually turned out for the best as after some research, I found resources he provides on the web and was able to use those to craft a plan for the Rocket City Marathon I did in December 2016.

The Starting Line

Waiting at the starting line of the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville, AL - December 2016.

Not sure why I haven't done this sooner, but I am starting up a blog dedicated to my running "hobby". I say hobby since I am most certainly not a professional runner. Running probably does qualify as a hobby for me though since I continue to do it even though I managed to achieve some major health goals - including losing a bunch of weight - last year. I considered just doing entries on an existing blog I have that covers all kinds of topics, but figured I might try one that is dedicated to a single subject. Even that may be stretched a bit though as I expect to touch on topics like nutrition or technology to go along with the posts about runs and running.

As I write this (which may not coincide with when I finally publish it), I am just over a week away from running my second marathon. I'll probably write a separate post about that in the coming days. For now, I just needed to get a blog entry done to get things moving around here. I hope you may bookmark this site and check it every now and then. I'll commit to trying to keep some fresh content rolling in on a decently regular basis.

In the meantime, this first post is the equivalent of me standing at the starting line ready to go racing.

Thanks for reading!