On January 1st, in a flurry of excitement my wife, my oldest daughter, and I signed up for the Hutchinson Recreation Race Series. At the time it seemed like quite a reasonable proposition:

• The Firecracker 5K on June 27th in anticipation of Independence Day
• The Salty Dog Sprint Triathlon on August 8th
• The Classic Rock 5k on September 26th
• The Run For The Rocks Half-Marathon on September 27th

Two 5k races would be a piece of cake. The Sprint Triathlon that our entire family has competed in for 12 years…a challenge, but not something outside the realm of possibility. Finally, the local Half-Marathon that I’ve run twice and walked once in the five year history of the event. Yup, it sounded great at the time we signed up when snow covered the ground and months separated us from the actual races.

As a family we even ran in a couple additional local 5k races just to test ourselves. For one race dressed as superheroes for one charity race, and despite the frigid weather, had a great time as a family.

When the first race, The Firecracker 5k, it turned out alright. Although my time was a bit slower than I would’ve liked, I finished the race in it’s entirety. No body parts were left on the course, and I managed to run* the entire race. OK, let’s be honest run is a bit of a misnomer for me. I plod. Or more accurately, I slog along at a pace that sometimes leaves me in the dust of people who are walking. But I do give it what I can. I was never a distance runner, so I’ve come to accept my lack of speed.

The Salty Dog Triathlon was a bit more of a challenge for me, and my 190th placing among the 194 participants displayed my lack of fitness, I soldiered on through the race. At the end I was happy to have competed again, and was actually spurred to a bit of action…including more cardio training. My thought was that I could get myself ready for the next race that was well over a month away. I had a starting point, so I knew in my head what I needed to do.

But today I’m here, 15 days from back-to-back 5k and Half Marathon and I’m trying to figure out how this is all going to play out. For the past week I’ve started to get worried, and hence have taken my training more seriously. I came up with the brilliant idea that I would try and interval train, running 1km then walking 1km. I’ve even set goals for the speed of each kilometer, and have decided that I’d train for at least an hour each session. Three days in and I’m nursing a toe with a severely split nail (from tip to quick), but I’ve battled through. Tonight is a no-run day, so I’ll workout on the stationary cycle and hit the weights as much as I can. I say as much as I can because my torn rotator cuff makes it hard to do much lifting, and I have to perform all sorts of accommodations to lift at all. Of course, my running form is also impacted by the stupid shoulder.

I had hoped that implementing my standing desk would have led to a huge increase in my overall fitness. While my legs are a bit stronger, I’m a lot more tired at the end of the day from standing the entire time. This has impacted my motivation to workout, especially run, but let’s face it…it was going to be a battle getting me to regularly and properly train for anything. Especially train for a half marathon.

So, in little more than two weeks I’ll run a 5k on Saturday. Then bright and early Sunday morning we’ll set out on a half marathon. At this point I’m hoping to complete the race before they shut the course down. It’s not much of a goal, but it’s something I think I can achieve. Frankly, I’m scared half-witless that I won’t finish in time and have to be pulled from he course. I’m not sure how I’d deal with that emotional blow.

Despite the fact that I know it’s far too little and far too late I’m finally taking the training a bit more seriously. Here’s to proving that procrastination is a bad thing but also proving that I’ll never learn.

So much for being older and wiser!