Many of you know that I began running several years ago and this hobby has literally changed my life. Cheesy I know, but when I started, I was about 30 pounds heavier and really bad at following through with a task or a challenge. I didn't have much confidence in myself and I was bouncing around trying to figure out who I was. Now, I feel that I can do things I set my mind to, I accomplish goals that I set, and I have more of an understanding of who I am than ever before, miles and miles on the road alone will teach you so much about yourself.
I can remember back to high school, years before I became a runner, I became completely fascinated by the NYC marathon. When I did become a runner, I never really felt "worthy" of running it, (I still don't really) and of course, you have to do one of three things to get in, qualify (yeah, right), get in through the lottery system (about a 3% chance), or raise money through a charity. Due to the fact that I wanted in THIS year, before my 35th bday, I decided to enter through a charity, Team for Kids, and commit to raising $2700. THEN, I decided to try to talk my running buddy into it, who at the time, had yet to run her first marathon. However, soon after her (and her husbands) first race, they decided to get on board. Which was SUPER exciting, but DID double our fundraising goal. OH WELL. We started fundraising, through Parents Nights Out, garage sales, and painting parties. We spent the spring training for the Memorial in April, reduced our miles for the months of May and June, added a weight lifting program, and about 4 weeks ago, started our 20 week training plan for NYC. In JULY, in OKLAHOMA. You know what that means? THAT means it's HOT. Our bathtubs are constantly covered in sweat covered clothes, that have to dry out before we can even put them in our dirty clothes to limit the smell. We drip sweat like we never knew we could, we have already had runs that haven't started until 9:30pm. And today, we have our first two-a-day, 6 in the am and 6 in the pm, oh, and it's the hottest day so far. Yikes.
The other challenge, besides our training plan that consist of almost 700 miles, is the fact that both of our husbands are training for races, Colby a full and Josh a tri (colby may be training of the tri too, I'm not sure) and we all have a job or two, we have four kids, and C is on call 1/3 of the time. So that means some runs are tricky. Take this morning, our first of two runs, C got called in before E and I were even out of the driveway. SO, we ran 1.25 out and back while C got ready and finished the rest by running back and forth on the appx 200 meter stretch in front of her house where we could see her front door and staggering our start so that one of us was always really close to her driveway. WHY? Because one of the four kids was sleeping inside and we had to make sure she was ok. We ran back and forth while sticking our head in every few minutes to check on Q and of course, she slept the whole time. All in all, despite the redundancy, getting to 6 was pretty quick and painless, it was just warm. But not nearly as warm as the day before when my husband had to go get a bike ride in and my two kids were home and awake, and I waited until 11am to go do speed work, which I also had to do right in front of my house so I could watch my kids who were playing in the driveway and/or riding their bikes....even my EYELASHES were dripping sweat.
Normally our runs are OUR time, but 6 days a week? We are gonna just have to do what we have got to do. And of course, we have to get used to it this summer, because come Fall, E and I go back to work and we have football seasons to contend with, and yes, two different football teams, of course...
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