Thanks for the encouragement!

Great comments on that last post and I wanted to just say that I really appreciate it. Call me needy but I get a lot of motivation knowing that friends and fellow journeymen are cheering for me and want to see me succeed.

So far, so good this week. I got in another 40+ minute workout yesterday after work. There were TONS of people at Memorial Park last night, probably the busiest I've ever seen it. I got 3 hot miles in at 13:57 pace. Again, I felt very loose and relaxed. The extra stretching before and after my runs seems to be helping a lot.

Tonight will be a good test of my commitment. I'm on call for the next two days but need to run 5 tonight and 3 tomorrow. That means I'm going to have to stay close to home in case I get beeped. I'm very hesitant to venture out when I'm on call for fear my run will be cut short and my pattern of late has been to simply blow off the run altogether. Inevitably, I end up regretting that decision when the pager never goes off. So, tonight, I"m just gonna DO IT!!! If I get paged, then sobeit. I've got to do this.

My main goal right now to get me to July 31 is to lose as much weight as possible. I've got to stay focused. I'd like to work on my running but I've got to concentrate on my calories right now. 25 pounds of weight loss and building back up to a modest 25 miles per week puts me in a very good position to start marathon training the end of July. In my opinion, the 25 lbs alone is worth 5 minutes off my best 5K and will get me a little closer to "keeping up" with the group come marathon trainin season. Hopefully, come the fall series, I won't be struggling to get in under the cutoff for some of these races. I'm really getting pumped up again and looking forward to the Fall.