This will be my first attempt at blogging in quite some time. Several blogs, both new and old have recently caught my attention. This, coupled with the fact that I have caught a long-term vision for my running, has me thinking that the time is right to try my hand at blogging.
First, a little background: Back in high school I played football. As a football player, I thought that cross-country runners were silly for just running. I also thought that I would/could never want to just run, that doing so was a joke. Turns out, the joke was on me.
Nearly ten years after graduating high school, my sister Elizabeth came to me with the idea of running the 2011 Walt Disney World Half Marathon together. She said it would be fun to run together, and that people my size were running these races. So, I registered and I trained. After the race was over, it turned out that she was half right; it was a lot of fun to run the Half. However, I ended up running the race solo after she bailed on me several months prior to the race (She did come down to cheer me on. Immediately after the race, though, I still was not sold on running being a long-term thing, or even something I would want to repeat at all.
The next day, I went back to Epcot to watch the end of the Full Marathon. To my surprise, these people looked normal, and not all that much different from me. At that point, I resolved not only to run the Full Marathon the following year, but the Goofy Race and a Half Challenge (Half on Saturday, Full on Sunday) the year after that.
Earlier this month, after I got back to Maryland from running the WDW Marathon, I was asked by a friend what my ultimate goal was, I didn’t have a clear idea beyond the Goofy, which I didn’t think was sufficient. In the weeks since I was asked the question I started thinking more and more about the question. The conclusion I have come to concerning my ultimate goal is one that would have seemed beyond crazy just two years ago. My new long term goal is to qualify and hopefully run the Boston Marathon before I turn 40.
I’m turning 30 this year with a base Marathon time of 6:52:02. This blog is the story of my journey from the couch to Boston qualifying through Half Marathons, Full Marathons, and everything in between.
This blog will touch on other subjects beyond running as I’ve found that running provides the opportunity to indulge two of my other loves, travel and food. My faith will play a significant role in training and will come up at various points in the process. Other interests will probably also show up here including history, Route 66, Disney, Photography, the New York Yankees, and University of Louisville athletics among others. However, through it all the prize of qualifying for Boston will remain paramount. It should be an interesting journey.
As I get the blog up and running there may/will be a few layout changes in the near future, as I tweak it to make it look how I want it to. For those of you who are more experienced at this than I am, both in running and blogging, I welcome any input you all may have.
P.S., For those wondering about the title of my blog, a Clydesdale is a male runner weighing 200 lbs or more, something that by the time my ultimate goal is reached, should no longer be descriptive of me.
