Today was the sec­ond day of my train­ing for the 2006 Cleve­land Marathon. I did­n’t write about the first day because the first day was a day of rest. Jeff Schuler rec­om­mend­ed Hal Hig­don’s train­ing pro­grams and I nat­u­ral­ly select­ed the novice pro­gram to help me pre­pare. Here is a week by week look at how my train­ing should pro­ceed.

I had­n’t run in a few months until putting in my three miles today. I did­n’t stretch appro­pri­ate­ly and now my right hip flex­or is a bit achy, but I think if I stretch well for my next run I should be okay. I got a pedome­ter from work for tak­ing a stu­pid well­ness sur­vey and found out that it does­n’t work at all for run­ning. My three miles reg­is­tered as 1.28, which I know was incor­rect. It was a bit harsh breath­ing the cold air until my body got warmed up, and then I was fine. Until that hap­pened though, I had to walk for brief inter­vals to catch my breath again. It felt like I was out of breath because of the cold, not the exer­tion, but I could be wrong. Some dum­b­ass kid doing laps of W 25th in his beat­er kept yelling stuff at me. Some things nev­er change.

I’ve got this idea though, some­thing that will keep me more moti­vat­ed to train for the marathon. I’d like to try to raise some mon­ey to ben­e­fit the home­less in Cleve­land. I’ve nev­er done any­thing like that before, ask­ing for pledges and such, but I’m slow­ly coor­di­nat­ing all the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion and approval for it. I’m think­ing about cre­at­ing a Drop­Cash account to raise a cer­tain amount of mon­ey [$1500?] for what­ev­er char­i­ty I end up decid­ing on. Then I’ll just need to get the word out. Maybe as anoth­er incen­tive I could offer to match 10% of what­ev­er ends up being raised. I dun­no. I’ll fig­ure it out and keep you post­ed. Hope­ful­ly this will be some­thing that is allowed by the peo­ple in charge of the Cleve­land Marathon.