I don’t know if this will be any encouragement to you. The last day of January when I was 46 my wife said it’s a nice day lets go to the track and walk. On that day we walked 2 miles and that was all I wanted. But the next day we decided to keep it up to lose some weight. This went on every day but Sunday for two weeks. At that time I started to walk a lap and run a lap (run may be too strong of a word). As I continued I increased my run distances and decreased my walk distances until I could run the whole 2 miles. Without trying my pace was getting faster and faster. I began adding miles to my daily runs.
One day about 4 months in someone ask if I was training for a Marathon. It had never entered my mind. I was enjoying the fact that 35 lbs. were gone and I liked to run. The next day I thought maybe it was possible so I found a training plan (Smart Coach) on Runners World. It was an 18 week program. I took it to the High School Cross Country Coach (a friend) he had trained my boys. He looked at it and said I thought you wanted to make it to Boston? He added a little speed work. I will tell you that I did not hit every workout but I was consistent and tried every time. At the end of what ended up being 19 weeks. I ran Dallas White Rock Marathon. My next race was Boston. I am now a few days away from running Marathon number 17 at age 52 and a month away from number 18 at age 53. These will be my 4th and 5th this year. I have had a lot of things happen to sideline my training at times but as soon as I could I would get back to running. I tell you this to let you know to be consistent with your training but listen to your body it is much better to lay out a day or two than injure yourself and be on the sideline for months.