Nashville Marathon :: Jim's Run

Ready for the Nashville Country Music Marathon

Posted by Jim on April 15, 2012

I’m ready. I’ve finished the most difficult part of the marathon training and now I’m tapering my mileage during these last couple weeks before the marathon. I’ve run 441 miles and nearly 100 hours to get ready for this race. I would have liked to get in more miles, but the 25 mile run last week (only 1.2 miles short of a marathon) told me that I’m ready to finish. Even with the nearly six weeks off during December/January (due to injury), I was able to get back on track and ready for the race.

My biggest regret in preparing for this marathon is that I’ve not lost more weight. As of this morning I’m down 16.75 pounds from my starting weight of 161.5, but it looks like I’ll be running the marathon at just over 240 pounds. That’s a lot of extra weight that I simply shouldn’t be bringing along. But I have only myself to blame.

I plan to continue running regularly after the marathon so that I can stay in shape and continue to lose weight. I’m hoping to weight 220 by the end of September this year. That would be a total weight lose of 41.5 pounds in one year.

I completed three training runs so far this week:

On Tuesday I ran a comfortable six miles in an hour and 20 minutes. On Thursday I completed my last speed run before the marathon. I ran a quick pace of 10:43 a mile for a 10 kilometer run on the crushed rock trail at the Walker County Community Center. Then today I completed 8.7 miles on the roads in Cloudland Canyon State Park.

Just 13 more days until I stand in the starting corral at the Country Music Marathon in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m excited. The anticipation is starting to set in as I draw closer to finishing this 30 year goal.

Categories Races, Training
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Halfway There! Help Support St. Jude Children’s Hospital

Posted by Jim on March 13, 2012

Last night, because of the support of a couple friends, I reached and exceeded the halfway mark in my goal to raise $500 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I decided early in my training that I wanted to do more than just finish the marathon. The Nashville Marathon had already partnered with St. Jude, so raising money for their research hospital seemed like a great idea. I was even more excited to help when I learned that St. Jude never charges the family for medical services not covered by insurance. And the hospital’s research on children’s catastrophic diseases has helped save the lives of thousands of children.

If you’d like to help St. Jude and help me reach my goal, visit http://bit.ly/jimsrun and click the donate button in the top right corner. And thank you for doing your part!

[PhotoCredit:Ginny]

Categories St Jude
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Running with Lance

Posted by Jim on March 5, 2012

I felt really good today, so I ran six miles for my training. That’s a couple miles more than planned. I’m starting to get excited about the marathon and finally achieving the goal of finishing.

When I was in high school, I ran track all four years. I only won one race, but I enjoyed running and winning wasn’t really my goal. That’s not to say that I didn’t want to win, but I felt running was more of a personal challenge…pushing yourself a little further or faster than you have run before. I regularly trained with Lance Darland, a close friend and an amazing athlete. Lance regularly ran the mile under 4:30, so there was little chance of my beating him. We typically ran the same events: 2-mile, mile and 1/2 mile.

Running with Lance was a lot of fun for me. Lance and I ran our first 10K race together, and often talked about someday finishing a marathon. But contrary to what some may have thought, Lance didn’t really enjoy running just for the fun of it. He liked to race. He would train hard, but only when someone was there to push him. He had natural talent, something I lacked.

I like to run. I usually have to push myself to get my shoes on and out the door, but once I’m running I really enjoy it. Sometimes I run with my iPod and listen to an audiobook. Other times I just run. Either way, I enjoy getting away and seeing what my body can endure. Now that I’m getting older, my body doesn’t want to endure as much. But I’m thrilled to find that the past few months of training have started to turn that around.

Lance is no longer around. He died years ago, I’m told in a car accident. So there’s no running partner now. But I still remember our runs on the country roads outside of Harrodsburg, Kentucky. I’m sure I’ll think about Lance when I finally cross the finish line in Nashville next month.

Categories Training
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Running on the Riverwalk

Posted by Jim on February 21, 2012

I had an interview near downtown Chattanooga today, so I decided to take a change of clothes and run on the Tennessee Riverwalk (just across the street from my interview). It was a chilly 52 degrees, but the sun was shining and the Riverwalk was busy. I parked by the Chickamauga Dam, changed clothes and hit the trail. Even though I had a long run yesterday, I was feeling great and decided to see how I did eliminating my walk breaks on this run.

My pace for the first mile was nice at 11:45. Again, since I run with a heart monitor, I expected that I would slow down over the next few miles. And I did. I decided to turn around at the two mile mark (easy to recognize by the Jim Collins metal sculptures place at each mile mark, see photo above). My run back was almost a minute slower per mile.

I finished the four mile run in just under 49 minutes. This is a pretty good pace for me right now. I stayed in my training zone of 132-150 heart beat per minute for 95% of the run. Overall, this was a great run for me. I feel confident now that my past injury is healed and I should have no problem training for the marathon these next two months. I still want to lose nearly 15 more pounds so that I’m running the marathon at a weight of about 235. But honestly, I’ll be happy to be under 240.

One other note: since I am playing catch-up on my training, I have to accelerate my long run increases for the next several weeks. I’m thinking about adding 3 miles to my long run every other week. That would have me running my longest, a 22 mile run, just two weeks before the marathon. I had wanted to run up to 25 miles on my longest run before the marathon, but the 22 miles will have to do. I don’t want to injure myself from over-training.

(Original Photo Credit: Michael Tinkler)

Categories Diet, Training
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PurpleStride 5K in Chattanooga

Posted by Jim on November 12, 2011

When I got up this morning at 6:30 am, I went directly to my computer to check the weather in Chattanooga: 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, I’d rather run in the cold than run in the heat…but this cold? Shelley and I arrived at the course around 8:00 am and things were already looking better. The frost was off the ground and the sun was already working it’s magic. I was ready to run my first race in training for the Nashville Marathon next April.

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network folks had done a great job putting together this event. A band was playing, clowns were tying balloon animals and there was plenty of purple around in t-shirts, gifts, balloons and banners. Many of the runners and walkers were attending in honor of someone they knew who has or had pancreatic cancer. I’m not sure of the total attendance, but I estimated it was over 500. Maybe 300+ would be running or walking the 5K.

As we neared the start of the race, it felt warm enough to run in shorts with a technical shirt and my wonderfully purple race shirt. I kept my gloves on, remembering my experience from Wednesday’s training run.

So here I am ready to start the race, sizing up my competition. I figure I’ve got a chance against the guy with the sign in front of me. Really, how fast can you run with a sign attached to a tennis racquet? Looking at this photo I can see that I need to either 1) keep working on the weight loss, 2) and/or improve my posture. But hey, this blog is about honesty. So here I am, bad posture and extruding belly waiting for the race to start. Soon after this photo, the race coordinators informed us that we were facing the wrong direction. So, I turned around and got ready to race. The temperature was now a pleasant 44F.

The race was an out and back run from the First Tennessee Pavilion next to the UTC football stadium to a turnaround near the Tennessee River. Given that I had not run any speed workouts or races for nearly 10 years, I didn’t know for sure what to expect. I wore my heart monitor to track how things were going during the run. I had no problem keeping my heart rate between 88 – 95% of my HRmax. This is where I had decided I wanted to run the 5K. I will use a lower HR zone for longer runs.

I was surprised how dead my legs felt for most of the run. The hills were insignificant (except a short climb right before the finish), so I can’t blame that. I think my body is simply not used to moving at such a fast pace (okay, fast by my standards). Other than feeling like my legs didn’t want to keep up, I felt fine for the run.

As you can see from the above photo, I was winning the race here on the final sprint. It seems that the 100+ people who were ahead of me all dropped out after 3.1 miles. In the photo I had just finished that last little hill you see behind me and had about 80 yards to sprint to the finish. I was quite pleased as I could see I would be finishing the race under the 31 minute goal I had set.

I crossed the line with the official clock saying 30:47 and my watch saying 30:22. The difference was the time between the start of the race and when I crossed the starting line. We wore timing chips, so the official time will probably be on the Internet in the next week or so.

I had pushed hard the last couple hundred yards, and my body was showing it. My pulse at the finish line was 179 BPM and my breathing was quite hard. As usual for me after a run like this, I had a bad cough that lasted for a few minutes. After the finish turned in my timing chip and walked back to meet my coach, photographer, wife and one-person cheering section.

Overall, it was a great morning. I had a good run and felt great afterward. I got to help the cause of pancreatic cancer treatment and see the importance of this cause for many people who had been affected in some way. It reminded me of the importance of the reason I am running the Nashville Marathon and the children of St Jude Children’s Hospital.

I’m now going to start adding some speed workouts to my training starting with one workout every two weeks (when I’m not racing). My next race will be the Lookout Mountain 10K trail run on December 17, 2011. I’m excited because both of my sons will be visiting from California for Christmas. They will be joining Shelley to cheer me on at the 10K run.

Thanks for reading my blog and following my effort to finish a marathon. Only 168 more days before I head to Nashville and achieve this lifetime goal.

Categories Races
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Welcome to Jim’s Run

Posted by Jim on October 29, 2011

Hello World! I’m starting this blog to document my effort to run the Nashville Country Music Marathon on April 28, 2012 AND to raise $500 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The blog is a part of my motivation to complete this race. Every few days, I will update the blog with how my training is going, information about the race and running a marathon, and stories that tell about the amazing work being done at the St. Jude Children’s Hospital.