Let's Run!

Laura and I had a great weekend. Friday night, we went to the University movie theater and caught a double feature. We payed $6 for both of us to see the double feature, you can't beat that price for 5 hours of movies! Happy Feet was the first showing, Laura wanted to see the movie, I was indifferent as to whether I saw it or not, but I thought it was a great movie for kids. Robin Williams always does great work with animated movies, his voice is just hilarious!

After Happy feet we had an hour until the second movie played. We went and did a geocache just as it was getting dark and then returned for the second movie. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King showed at 9:30, the movie is over three hours long and we made it home just about 1:00 a.m. The Lord of the Rings is really just one big movie, but split into three movies for the sake of time. The trilogy is around 10 hours long, so it can take a long time to watch the entire thing. However, it still remains one of our favorite movies to watch.

Saturday, we decided to just relax and enjoy the day. It was a nice day in the 60's and sunny. We did leave the house to find another geocache or two, but then we came straight home. Laura did some work on her bike and I watched the NASCAR race in Phoenix. We felt like we needed some exercise though and decided on Saturday night that we needed to take a hike on Sunday. The weather for Sunday didn't look to good, but rain wasn't predicted to start until the afternoon so we decided to take a hike early in the morning.

Sunday, we were at the trailhead at 9:30 to start our hike. We realized we had a geocache on a mountain near Missoula so we decided it was time to go find it. It was sunny and we had a cool wind, so we were quite comfortable for our hike. We decided that we didn't have any hurry to get to the cache so we took logging roads for most of the way. When we made it to the top of the mountain we realized we had hiked 5 miles, but the truck was only 1.9 miles away! We took a picture at the geocache - it's hard to see, but that's Squaw Peak in the background - we plan to hike to the top of it sometime this summer as well.

There is still just too much snow on most of the mountain to hike and get the geocaches we want to get. As we were hiking we had some great views looking north. We could see the Mission Mountains - they are the mountains on the east side of Flathead Lake - and they were still covered in LOTS of snow. So, we are slowly getting around to hiking and getting some geocaches, but the mountains are reluctant to let us start hiking. That's alright though, we've got some new plans to get in shape again.Saturday night, I got to thinking about how I could get back into running and training again and I decided I needed to get a goal set. I had to do some thinking about what I wanted to train for, but while I was thinking I went to the scale and found out that losing some weight is going to be a goal in itself. I'm weighing it at the heaviest yet, 203 pounds! So, goal number one is to lose the weight and goal number two is get in shape to run the Spokane Marathon or Half Marathon.

I had been thinking about training for the Missoula Marathon in July, but the $60 entry fee was enough to deter me from running. I remember about the Spokane Marathon and the entry fee is only $22 if you run and don't buy a shirt...

So here's the plan: The Spokane Marathon is October 14, 2007 - 25 weeks away basically. That's plenty of time to get in shape. I plan on training for the half marathon right now. Not only will that get me running again, but I should be able to lose weight as well. So the first goal is to lose 25 pounds and be at 175 pounds and goal number two is to be able to run 7 minute miles for the half marathon. That's one hour and thirty one minutes, which would likely place me in the top 20 for the half marathon, as well as place in my age division. I think losing the weight will be harder to do than run the 7 minute miles, it will take awhile to get back into shape, but once I get there I know it won't take much to get a pace set and stick with it. I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Laura thought I had a pretty good idea and she is going to train to run as well. Although, I am going to benefit the most by getting back in shape, she would like to lose a few pounds as well and we might as well do it together.

On that note, as soon as my talk radio program is over I am headed out the door for a short run. Then I have a list of things to do today. The lawn is in need of a mowing, I've got a few dishes to clean, and then Laura left me a list on the refrigerator of things I could do if I 'get bored.' So I am going to stay busy today and I have a feeling by the end of the day I will be thinking about how marvelous that landscaping is going to be this summer! Until again

-=Nolan=-