Return of the Jedi

Wow it's been awhile, eh? Turns out I have a bunch of saved drafts for blog posts that I just never got around to completing. Oh well. Starting fresh here.

So what have I been up to?! Please relax.. I'll tell you.

First of all, I've been playing a lot of video games lately. I finally beat Alien: Isolation and man, such a good game. Finally some fan service with an Alien game that focuses more on survival than guns-blazing. But you're not here for that. Actually no one is here so I can talk about what I want.

I've been running. A lot. Surprisingly my last, and only, marathon was in 2008. The more I think about it, the more depressing that is. I've been really active since then: half marathons, tons of 5ks, trail races, and even a half Iron distance race.

However, I have yet to recapture the distance and sense of accomplishment that comes with something as big as a marathon. So what have I really been up to? Well, I have a marathon in March (Wrightsville Beach Marathon) that I've been working towards. "Oh wow, good luck!" you say? No, get out of there with that. There's a bigger picture here. AaronMFJ is going for an ultra. That's right, an ultra marathon. That puny little marathon will be just another training run in my grand plan to do the Umstead 50 here in Raleigh. The ultimate goal is to be able to do the Umstead 100 but that is still a ways off. I'm currently in the 30 mile/week range and plan on keeping it increasing until around 65 mile/week.

Overall I'm pretty excited about it. Over the last few years I've been putting on miles then falling back down. It's been a pretty vicious cycle of increase, get lazy and decrease, increase, winter decrease. I know winter is just now starting, and suddenly, but I've been keeping with it pretty regularly with 3x/week running days. Moving long run to Saturday from Sunday has done wonders for me. It's not all ice cream and rainbows, my feathered friends. No no. I've been battling injuries here and there. Most of them either hockey related (knees) and currently a pretty sore ankle from rolling it on a trial run. All-in-all though, I'm in pretty good shape. Longest run so far has been 15 miles and I was almost sore-less the next day. Deal with it.

I'm excited about what is to come. I haven't yet chosen my first ultra. I mentioned Umstead 50 but that is sold out for 2015. I will try for 2016 but in the meantime I've got my eye on the MST 50k  which sounds pretty exciting, especially since I've been doing some long runs out there. Stay tuned friends, more updates to come!

-AaronMFJ