I know that, last week, I mentioned wanting to complete two workouts per week for the rest of the year. This week, I only got 1 workout in. It wasn’t much. But, I thought I’d start my work towards that magical Boston Marathon qualifying time with running a Jeff Galloway “Magic Mile.” I wanted to start here because it’s something that will give me an accurate picture of where I’m at fitness-wise to begin my training. In Jeff Galloway’s Mental Training for Runners, he mentions that one of the mental obstacles  we runners face is having unrealistic expectations. Sure, I could start my training expecting to run like I did a year ago. But, since I’m not in the same fitness level, it would lead to failure after failure. As those failures add up, my motivation to keep training will likely diminish. So, it’s best to have realistic goals and then seek to improve.  Here’s what Jeff has to say about the Magic Mile.

So, how did my Magic Mile go?

Slow. My Magic Mile time was actually 14:28. It appears that I’m a bit rusty with the ol’ Garmin watch. I spent the week trying to figure out what intervals I was going to run in this Magic Mile. My last run was in September. So, it was hard to predict. I started off the first quarter-mile using a run 30 seconds, walk 60 seconds. As I made my way around the track, it got pretty obvious that I couldn’t hold that. So, I decided to change the intervals in the second lap to run 30 seconds, walk 90 seconds. After all, this has been my fail safe intervals over the past few years.

As lap 2 started, I expected for this to feel easier. It wasn’t. I was still breathing pretty heavy on my run intervals and didn’t recover as well on the walk breaks as I would have liked. However, it was still an interval I could hold. The Magic Mile is supposed to push you. Because of my lack of conditioning, these intervals accomplished just that.

This is most likely my slowest Magic Mile ever. However, I was okay with it because it told me where I am right now.

So, this is what my Magic Mile tells me about my training. As Jeff Galloway said in the video above, you want to training at 2 minutes per mile over your Marathon Pace. So, as I hit up the treadmill this week, I’ll want to pace myself accordingly. A lot of beginning runners often wonder how where to begin. According to Jeff Galloway’s web site, I should be running 4 seconds, walking 30 seconds. So, on my first treadmill time, I’ll start off with doing this for 20 minutes and see how it feels.

When I started running, Jeff Galloway’s web site had a chart you could download to give race finish times. With my current Magic Mile time, here’s what my predicted finish would be if I were to run the following distances:

• 5K – 46:39
• 10K – 1:43:23
• Half Marathon – 3:47:56
• Marathon – 8:13:52

None of these times look good to me. However, this Magic Mile tells me how much work I’ve got to do. So, here’s the plan. I am going to run a Magic Mile every month while I’m maintaining the focus on weight loss. I need to be running a 10:15 Magic Mile in order to PR my 5K time. So, if I get my Magic Mile time down to 10 minutes, I may make an attempt to set a new 5K PR (regardless of weight). If I do set a new 5K PR, it will be time to start a couch to 5K program. If I don’t set a new 5K PR, then my subsequent 5K races will be PR attempts. In other words, I’m going to let my body tell me when it’s ready.

This ongoing battle will be fought over the course of 2019. On Saturday, I weighed myself for the first time in months. Needless to say, the lack of workouts has not lead to a good result. As we head into the holidays, I’m not anticipating any significant gains in this area. However, I am going to use this time to formulate a plan that I can execute in 2019.

In other news…I did vote this past Tuesday. Did you? This blog is NOT a political one. So, I won’t go into any tyraids here about this. All I’ll say is that I did do my civic duty this past week and voted.

Also, I forgot to mention last time, but on November 4th, I was on TV as part of Mickey’s 90th Spectacular on ABC-TV!

The camera caught me in two spots. First above as they panned across the choir singing “The Mickey Mouse Club March.”

Then, as Mickey made his way center stage to lead us all through the end of the song. It was a super fun event to be involved in! As a non-professional musician, I am forever grateful for the fun things I still get to do with music. As many of you know, I sing with the Disney Employee Choir for the Disneyland Candlelight Processional….yes, WDW fans. Disneyland also has a Candlelight Processional. Fun fact…the Disneyland Candlelight Processional started in 1958 as “Walt’s Christmas Card” to the City of Anaheim. Anyways, being in the choir has lead to some fun opportunities for me over the years. Not only do I get to sing Candlelight (which I love), but I’ve been able to sing on Good Morning America for It’s A Small World’s 40th Anniversary, on a Disney Christmas Special (last year) with Idina Menzel and Kristen Bell, singing “The Circle of Life” with recording artist that recorded the song at the D23 Convention…and now this. Fun times!

That’s all for now. I’m trying to get back into this blogging thing. I’m also working on how to best utilize my Facebook page for this blog. One thing I’m going to include on the Facebook page are links to all the videos I blog about here…and more. So, head over to the Facebook group to see all that is happening there.