My mom and I have been debating about this for quite a while. It's been a little while coming, but I think I've finally found my resolution, even if she hasn't.

I'm going to run in the ING Ottawa Marathon this summer.

I know that this is an incredibly ambitious goal, all things considered. When people hear of my resolution, they sort of chuckle at my humor, until they realized I'm dead serious.

Less that .1% of people will ever complete a marathon in their life. However, I've been running for just under a year now, and I've competed in 3 different 10K races. In my first race ever, I got 1st place out of about 50 people, second race I got 9th out of about 200, and finally on this New Years Eve I participated in the resolution run, and out of 1700 people I got 7th.

I think it's time to move on and try a more difficult goal.

Marathons are notoriously bad for runners. If I were to attempt one today, I would either fail miserable around the 32K mark, or have an awful time of around 4 1/2 hours. There is a "wall" that runners hit when they attempt long distances, and it occurs when the runner runs out of glycogen stores in the muscles. If this happens, you might as well stop right there, because your body cannot physically go any further.

To prevent this, it takes about 20 weeks to properly train yourself, with about 60-80K of training needing to be done each week. I already run about 30-35K a week, so as long as I taper correctly, increasing the amount can be done safely in about 2 weeks.

My absolutely awesome goal would be to complete the marathon in under 3 hours, 10 minutes and 59 seconds to be eligible for the Boston Marathon. However, I think personally I will be happy with anything under 3 hours 30 minutes.

So... Am I crazy? I feel like this is a resolution I will keep, because I kind of had this as a goal before New Years even came around.

P.S -- I will keep updating the sit-up count for each post made.
http://warrickneff.newgrounds.com/news /post/57076

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