Michele and I have been doing a lot of running lately. Last fall, I got started running a few 5k races with some friends at work. That’s only about 3 miles, so it wasn’t very difficult. I’m not a fast runner by any means, though. I run about a 10 minute mile.

Around the end of November, Michele signed us up for several more races. The longest was the Outback 12k on February 24. Twelve kilometers is 7.45 miles, which was much farther than I had run at the time (about 5 miles). So we made a 12-week training schedule (that was how many weeks we had until the race) where we ran a few times a week, and on the weekend ran a long run that gradually worked up to 12k.

There’s always a photographer at the finish line of these races who wants to later sell you a picture. As you can see from my picture, after running 12k at 3PM (as luck would have it, it was a little warm that weekend) I’m about to drop dead. I’ve got a picture of Michele, too, but she doesn’t exactly enjoy the way she looked finishing the race so I didn’t post it.

Our next goal, which is quite ambitious, is to run the Disney marathon next year. I think they do that in January or February. We’re still continuing our weekly runs, and we’re up to 8.5 miles now. That’s a long way from 26 miles, but you’ve got to start somewhere.