Baseline – Where I was when I started this training – July 2009

I consider myself to be in moderate shape right now (July 2009). Nowhere near the shape I was in while on active duty, but also nowhere near the shape I let myself slide into in the years after. The day I left active duty, I promised myself I would not run a single mile for a year, and that was a promise that I kept.

I also recognize that I am as of right now nowhere near in the shape I need to be in order to finish this little walk next spring.

Early last summer, I got the hankerin’ to get back into shape and set a goal for myself to be able to run to work while carrying everything I needed for the day. I figured it would be great, get back into shape and save gas at the same time! I forgot though, until the first day I actually did the run, that I was going to have to worry about getting back home again. So much for saving gas, as my wife had to help me drop the car off at work the night before. I did a test bike ride of the run, and found it to be 5.7 miles from my front door to the work campus. Great course too, as it’s almost exactly two miles from home to the entrance of the Perkiomen Trail at the corner of 2d Avenue and Main Street in Collegeville. The trail has been a much appreciated part of my workouts, and I am thankful that we’re lucky enough to have it so close to work and home.

It took a surprising 4 months of progressive distance with an 18 lbs. runner’s pack to get up to the 5 mile mark. I thought it was going to be quite a bit quicker than that, but I was in worse shape than I thought I was (doesn’t it always work out that way?). So, starting in the fall, I was able to do the run to work thing…very painful, but doable. Blisters were a factor, and I went though a couple of pairs of shoes figuring that out. The pack was great for lower back, shoulder and leg strength, and I’m extremely pleased now that I did that…it has made the transition to a heavy backpack over the past month much easier I’m sure.

I did that run to work thing on average twice per week through the fall, hit Thanksgiving and took a break. See, I’m a wuss, I don’t like being cold…and I convinced myself that taking the winter off wouldn’t matter all that much anyway.

Sometime in January, work-mates Surya, Jon and I decided we were going to do the Broad Street Run in May. Sounded like a great idea and fit nicely with what my (as of then hibernating) workout plan was. I hadn’t factored in though the difficulty of motivating myself to get out and run again in the cold early enough before May to be in shape for 10 miles. So in the beginning of March, it’s still cold out, I’m staring at a 10 mile run in less than 2 months, and I haven’t run since Thanksgiving.

That’s where the stupid started. I went out, got some cold weather running gear, threw on the pack and almost killed myself running the 5.74 miles to work after having not run at all for four months. I pulled it off, sure…but it was a mistake. This gave me a false sense of bravado and I continued my workout plan exactly where I left off in the fall, and promptly ended up with tendinitis in the left knee.

Surya and Jon ended up doing Broad Street without me and for the next week I kept getting comments dropped about how former Marines are supposed to be tough and that sort of thing.

So, I broke out the mountain bike and hit the weight room for a couple of months while my knee healed. That helped keep the cardio up quite well. I was pretty surprised as I’m not much of a biker that riding in to work and home again three times a week was the equivalent or better than running into work twice a week was. In the end, the hurt knee didn’t really slow me down all that much, just moved me into more of a cross training regimen. Over time, I was able to get runs inserted back into the schedule, and I ended up with a nice balance of running once a week and riding twice a week, plus light weights twice a week (about 20 minutes each, single muscle group) on the riding days.

And that puts me to where I was about a month ago when we started seriously training for the hike next spring. I could handle a 5.74 mile run with 18 lbs., or 11.48 miles (two ways) on the mountain bike on any given day.