A few days ago I received a text that a friend of mine whom was apart of my Las Vegas Extravaganza trip last month, was in the ICU with bleeding in the left ventricle of his brain. Apparently it was caused by extremely high blood pressure and may be an indication of a stroke or possible aneurysm. I picked up some mutual friends and sped off to the hospital to visit him. To make a long story short, the bleeding stopped and all of his tests were negative. It was solely the high BP that caused the bleeding, but it was obvious that he needed to change his eating and drinking habits. It's not normal for a 44 year old man to be in the hospital with a blood pressure reading of 221/111. The doctors were amazed that he didn't have a stroke at that point.
This leads me to me. Right before I got this news of my friend, I had been thinking of making some changes in my own life. I have been feeling more stressed out than normal. without going into too much detail, I have had many things happen this calendar year in my family that has been a stress creator and I have done a poor job at managing that stress or alleviating it. Exercise is a good way of relieving stress while at the same time, getting into better shape. I have always enjoyed running and was quite a good runner in high school, but it's been nearly 20 years since I was serious about it. So, with the Chicago Marathon right around the corner, I have decided to make a goal for myself of training for 2012 Chicago Marathon. From what I have read, you need to have a baseline foundation of 12-15 miles per week before officially starting your marathon training program, even for a beginner, which I most certainly am. Today was the first day that I went out for a brisk walk of about 2 miles. No, that's no astonishing feat (no pun intended), but I am going to start off slow so that I don't over do it and injure myself right out of the blocks.
I will update my progress as we go and if anyone (that is assuming I actually have regular readers of this blog) has some good suggestions on training for a Marathon over the course of 12 months, please let me know. Thanks and have fun. Below are a few links that I am including in case anyone has some interest in learning more about training for a marathon. I am putting myself in the Novice 1 category which means the running I do in the next 6 months is just to get to zero, if you will. Thanks again for reading.
Hal Hidgon
Running routes
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