Back in the Game

So my last post was May 20 of last year, and it wasn't long after that my running came to a stop. Sometime in August I began to think I was too busy to run, so for the next few months, there was virtually no running. I did run 2 or 3 times in November, and the same in December. I was travelling A LOT!!! I made many excuses, and began to think I was finished with running for a while. Unfortanately that lasted until this month.

Since the end of November, I have been living north of Orlando FL, running a Chick-fil-A temporarily. My first few weeks were extremely busy, being December in a mall!!! I worked Open-Close many times in December. When January rolled around, I began to see efforts paying of, as the store was running more efficiently and some of the leadership that is being developed really began to take ownership in the store. This is very exciting for me, meaning I will not be here 12-14 hours a day anymore. I want to thank every member of the team at Chick-fil-A @ Seminole Towne Center for committing to your role and running a successful store day in and day out!

So this brings me to running. I am back out there on the pavement and trails. My first day of the year was the Wednesday before last in which I ran 6 miles. My second time out was that Sunday, in which I ran 26.2 miles... I had to see if I still had it in me. I did feel it after this run for a few days.

Running in Florida is different than North GA! Everything is flat! It's crazy to look at the elevation on my GPS and it read 42 feet. The first time I saw this I thought it was wrong. The awesome part of running down here is the beautiful trails through the swamps. I haven't seen a gator yet, but I have my eye out for one. The Palm Trees also make this area beautiful. Oh, and so I ran across and orange on the trail, and I thought the same thing I thought last time I saw an orange on the trail... and that was a backpacker must have dropped their snack. But of course it actually fell of an orange tree, yeah that was pretty cool.

This week has been a huge success. I have run everyday and actually feel pretty good after a couple of double digit runs this week.

The 50 day challenge!

Beginning this Sunday Jan. 24, Brack, Spencer, and I are up for the challenge. We are committing to 50 days straight of training with no rest days. The stipulations are a minimum of 5 miles a day and at least one double digit a week. This challenge will run until March 14, seven days before ING Georgia. The last week of the challenge, I will probably be running the minimum most days, as I recover a little for ING Georgia. So we will see what happens. We will all be tweeting our workouts everyday, so you can follow @running_drew, @CoachBrack, and @spencart on twitter.

The goal for ING GA is to PR, that would be sub 2:58:28, but with a bigger goal of sub 2:50. I really hope to keep up with this blog, but more importantly to continue to experience new adventures on the trails and pavement! Thanks for reading, and I can't wait to get back to North GA and hit the trails with you guys.

From Flat Florida,

Running Drew