Although, I was a few miles short reaching my total running miles goal, I think that our 2 mile hike around Ritter Springs Park with a two-year old on my back made up for it. We set out to have a family day of fun as we went to Fantastic Caverns and decided to stop for a few Geocaches at Ritter Springs Park with my Christmas present, the Garmin Forerunner 305.

How much fun it is to go out for a hike and search for "treasures" as my son likes to say. Now, that’s some fun cross-training and family time.

My Christmas present is an amazing little tool. It’s not your average sports watch that you end up wearing as a work watch, too. It’s much more than that. I am talking about the Garmin Forerunner 305. This watch is amazing.

The Forerunner 305 is a GPS-enabled personal trainer. Its features include: wireless heart rate monitor, multisport, high-sensitivity receiver, courses feature, advanced workouts, and rechargeable lithium-ion battery. I found this blog by GPS Runner that has some good information about the Forerunner 305 and using GPS for training.

One added bonus to this amazing watch is that it can be used for Geocaching. That’s right! You can go to www.geocaching.com and find Geocaching locations in your area and download the coordinates to your Forerunner 305. This is a pretty cool feature and a lot of fun, especially as a family. We’ve taken it out several times for “treasure hunting.” The first time was with my parents, who had never even heard of Geocaching and thought that our son must be mispronouncing the name. It worked really well and I know this is something that we will continue to do.

We’ve been officially training for our marathon training to start for about a month now. It doesn’t really seem like it’s been that long, but we’re trying to get a good base under us so we can avoid any injury. I have also been walking and walking/jogging on and off for a year. When we first started talking about running a marathon, it took a lot of thinking for me to get used to the idea and eventually come around to thinking that yes, this is an attainable goal for us. We’ve both been long distance runners in the past, but never this long and that was actually half our lifetime ago! We are twice as old now. Maybe it’s even better now, though, because we’re not running for competition but more for personal goals. One advantage that I do feel that we have is the knowledge that at one time we did have the physical and mental capabilities to run longer distances. Hopefully it’s locked away somewhere inside us waiting to be unleashed. Actually, now that we have this goal for a month now, I’m pretty sure that it is.

I went out for a short jog this morning, with only two days to go before our 16-week marathon plan starts. As I was jogging this morning it began to lightly snow. This really sets the reality that our training is only bound to get cooler with snow and ice to come.

Some thoughts and questions came to mind this morning as I ran later in the morning than I normally do; it was kind of nice being able to see where I was going.

- Do you wear reflective wear? If so, what’s your recommendation?
- What do you wear for winter outdoor running?
- What do you carry to protect yourself as you run? (From dogs and other people)
- Do you listen to an mp3 player while you run? If so, what? Podcasts, music, etc…

It’s official - we either have Guts or we are Nuts! That is to be determined. We have just signed up for the St. Louis Marathon on April 11, 2010. At the age of 34, this will be our first marathon. 

We have 16 weeks to get ourselves into shape to run 26.2 miles. After a lot of research, we have found the training plan for us. Knowing that with two kids our time is limited on an aggressive plan and wanting to do what we can to keep on bodies injury free, we found our plan. It is from the The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer by David Whitsett, Forrest Dolgener, and Tanjala Kole.

Our goal is not to qualify for the Boston marathon (at least the first time out) but to have as much fun as possible as a couple and complete the St. Louis marathon together. Why a blog? We want to reflect our thoughts during training, share in a community of runners and motivate others to try something they thought they could never do.

So, please feel free to comment on our postings, share your experiences with us, and let us know if you have or will be running a marathon.