I finally got my Nike+ dongle for my shoes and a (refurbished) iPod nano and now I can showing off to the world the miles I'm racking up in an automated fashion. Whee!

Shaun gave me a running log a few days after I had started running and I've logged 55 miles (mostly 3 mile runs down to Lawrence and back) over the last 5 weeks. And I've run in 3 states. And I don't think I had ever run 3 miles, in a row, before. So I think I'm doing fine.

I know I had mentioned the Hal Higdon training schedules, but for my marathon training I'm going with the program set out in the Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer. This is a book that comes out of a class at the University of Northern Iowa that is a joint class between a psychology professor and a phys. ed. professor -- the phys. ed. professor brings the training you need to complete a marathon and the psychology professor brings a lot of self-helpy stuff about the mental preparation you need to get through the training process and then the race itself. I'd make fun of the self-helpy stuff, except that it seems to be helping already. And the book is aimed squarely at the non-runner and getting you to complete a marathon. Not do it with a great time or lose a lot of weight or any other side goals -- simply complete a marathon. Since that's what I'm trying to do, it seems like the perfect training program for me.

And as part of that, the training schedule is actually lighter than many of the others I've seen. The official "training" is only 16 weeks and so doesn't begin until June 18. Right now I'm in "pre-training", where I'm just supposed to get comfortable running for 40 minutes and/or 3 miles. Which is where I'm at. (I ran 4 miles in Vicksburg, but it was in the form of run 2 miles - stop at the Highway 61 Coffeehouse for an Italian soda and conversation - run 2 miles back.

I'll put a copy of this Nike+ widget on the sidebar, so you can always see how many miles I'm up to.