Then, last year, I started going to the high school’s track meets. I told some of my old students I’d come watch, and I had a blast. At one of these meets, one of my old students insinuated that I was old, fat, and slow. She might have used nicer words than that, but the bottom line is that she challenged me to a race.

Well, that was as good a reason as any for me to start running again. I went home that night, jogged two miles, and started on a regular workout routine. Our race – which was supposed to take place last June – never happened because she backed out. Probably a good thing, since I wasn’t in such great shape after only a month of training.

Ahh, but this year is a whole new year. I trained pretty regularly throughout the summer. I took a few weeks off in the end of August and beginning of September, because I pushed too hard and hurt my foot. It’s all healed up now, though, and I’m continuing with the routine.

Although I haven’t written much of anything recently on this site, I plan on keeping a log of my running activity. I don’t know if this would interest anyone as a reader – but it would be good for me to track my progress and my health throughout the year. So, if you don’t want to hear about my training… go read something else!

My Goals for This Year

My most immediate goal is a 5k race coming up in December. Each year, Rutgers hosts a charity 5k event in December – the Big Chill. It’s a competitive 5k run (and a fun 5k walk), and the event is used to collect toys for kids in the area for Christmas. This’ll be my first official race since high school, so I want to go out and see what kind of time I can run. I don’t expect anything spectacular. I’m pretty confident I can run about 25 minutes right now, and I’ve got two months left to train. My goal is to shave a few minutes off and run somewhere between 22 and 24 minutes.

I’ll probably find another 5k to run in the Spring, but my other goals for this year involve track events.  Three of my old students have now stepped up and challenged me to a race. Before you go thinking that a grown man shouldn’t be racing high school kids, keep in mind that these are all Seniors and three season athletes. It’s all for fun, but I would like to beat them all…

M. has challenged me to an 800m race. His PR last year was around 2:10 – a respectable time and better than I ran in my high school years. My goal, then, has to be to shave a few seconds off and run about 2:00 to 2:05. That’s going to be tough…

S. was the student who originally challenged me to a race last year. She wants to run a 400m. Her PR is somewhere around 68-70 seconds. I’m pretty confident I can run in the mid 60′s by June, and that’ll be a given if I hope to be competitive in the 800m race.

L. is the last to come on board, and she wants to run a 200m. She said her PR is in the high 20′s. If I’m on track to run a 60 second 400m, I should have no problem busting out a high 20′s 200m.

So those are the goals for the year. We’ll see how they work out.