First steps...

Brian, Jenny and I had lunch at Greg's Place -- a diner in Lucan. I like Greg's Place for a number of reasons -- but the fact that Greg had sponsored a leg of the Shore to Shore Relay from Port Stanley Ontario to Grand Bend Ontario this year certainly made it an appropriate spot to develop our plan of attack in qualifying for Boston. Besides, Jenny likes their poutine!

So I brought the June issue of Runner's World, and Brian brought several charts that he printed off from RunnersWorld.com from their SmartCoach area (http://www.runnersworld.com/cda/smartcoach/1,7148,s6-238-277-278-0-0-0-0,00.html?starf=&lrdy=0&slen=16&trainstart=ds1184031556609&startf=checkforward&hour=0&mins=0&secs=0&rlen=fivk&rdst=fivk&mpwe=11&diff=mod)

We decided that my copy of Runner's World was a bit too drastic for me. And the version that Brian had printed off was a bit too easy. So we settled on a version that had me training 'very hard' and had me already doing '30-35 miles per week' (when, in fact, I'm probably just doing 20 - 25).

We'll see how this one goes. It has me peaking at 51 miles in the toughest week -- including a long run of 20 miles -- in the 3rd week before our target marathon.

And speaking of target marathon, we've decided to do the Wine Glass Marathon in Corning, New York on September 30, 2007. See wineglassmarathon.com for details. We like this one because it is relatively close (5.5 hours drive), its small (under 1000 runners), and it is on a slight downhill grade almost all the way (a drop of roughly 200 feet over the course of 26.2 miles). Beside, both Brian and another runner in our group, Jed deJong, have already decided to do this one, so we may as well make it a party! Jed is also trying to qualify for Boston, so this should work out well.

Another bonus is that if I don't make my goal time of 3:30 in Corning, I may try to do the Niagara marathon a month later -- if I've recovered in time. Or perhaps we can find one in November. We'll see. Anyhow, for now I'm focused on Corning -- less than 13 weeks away!