Waking up the legs from the long slumber

The Roman poet, Sextus Propertius, wrote "Always toward absent lovers love's tide stronger flows".  It's been a long time since I have dedicated any time to endurance training.  Between four years of chiropractic school and changing my fitness goals towards more of a strength and power oriented program, my fitness has shifted from a strong aerobic foundation into a more rounded training program to form a more functional body.  Tempo runs turned into squats and the mid-week runs were supplanted by push/pull days.  I've seen myself gain nearly 15-20 pounds of weight (some good, some bad) since I last trained for anything endurance and last week those lbs weighed me down as I sloughed through 15 miles of painful and gasping running with a good friend of mine who is making the transition from strength/power training to putting the miles in to eventually run an ultra. 

The point of this post is to hold me accountable and lay out some goals/visions for the next two years.  The first part of making a physical change is putting what is to be changed in front of you so you know what you are about to tackle.  

Fitness Goals:

1) Complete a 100 mile ultra marathon by the time I'm 30 (September 1st, 2020.  Holy crap I'm old)
2) PR in every distance from the 5k to the ultra along the way (long shot but what the heck)
3) Continue to improve my strength in the core lifts of bench press, squat, and deads (bucking the trend that you can't do both)

One of the visions of this blog is to provide interesting content in the world of endurance training, strength, and conditioning.  These next two years will involve my training journey from zero to 100, breakdown of research articles from the fitness world, and hopefully even some content that provides educational value to anyone interested in biomechanics, fitness, running, and strength training.  Another goal is to show the incredible change the human body can undergo within a two year span.  I've lost a lot of fitness in the past two years and it's going to be a very difficult challenge to regain what was lost.  But I firmly believe that the journey from zero to 100 will be more rewarding than any fitness challenge I've undertaken. 

 Sextus proved to be a bright one, although I don't believe he was talking about endurance sport in his original quote.  He knew if you love something enough its absence only makes that love burn stronger.  After only 15 miles last week the fire that burns deep in every runner was lit and it ignited the desire for another endurance check mark of my bucket list.