Here Goes Nothing...

I created this blog to chronicle my training for my very first half marathon. Let me give you a little background information first:

I am not a runner. Period. In fact, I pretty much despise running. I am a fairly athletic person, I guess you could say. I played softball, volleyball, and basketball growing up, and I always enjoyed them, but I never really understood the idea of just running. What was the point?? I mean, put a giant barking dog behind me or an ice cream truck in front of me, and I'll have a reason to run, but other than that, come on...

I remember a couple of years ago, I signed up for a cardio boot camp at the YMCA. It was an intensive 8 week program that met twice a week (at 5:30 A.M.!! Don't even get me started on how I feel about mornings. I'll give you a hint...it's about the same as I feel about running). I did it with my friend Sara, who, mind you, is pretty much a machine. And who also happens to LOVE running. Wonderful. Every time we met, we ran for at least half the hour. I would always smile at Sara, and take off, knowing that I wouldn't see her (well, at least her face) until the end of class. In fact, the only people I would see for the next 30 minutes to an hour were the 2 pudgy ladies and the 60 year old man who kept pace with me at the back. Seriously. Because not only do I hate running, I'm not good at it. You would think with my 36 inch legs that I could at least keep up, but you'd be wrong.

So all that to say, never in my life did it even cross my mind to run a half marathon (13.1 miles). But let's flash forward to a few weeks ago. My friend Sara (not the previously mentioned machine - different Sara), who is in grad school at Baylor, signed up for the annual Bearathon. For some crazy reason, she thought I should run it with her. I guess she caught me in a weak (or insane) moment, and I actually told her I would consider it. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. You see, I tend to be a bit of a masochist. Sometimes I do things just to prove that I can, no matter how much pain it causes me. And this seemed like the perfect opportunity to push my body to its limits. So I told her I was in.



And that's where my story begins.



Sara and I both bought a book called "The Non-Runner's Marathon Guide For Women: Get Off Your Butt And On With Your Training," which has thus far been the most fun part of my training. It was written by a lady much like myself, who just up and decided to run a marathon. It is a pretty hilarious read. I would recommend it even if you aren't thinking about running a marathon.

Inside the book is a training schedule. It is set up to start 20 weeks before your race. Too bad we bought the book (about a week or two before Christmas) at about week 5. Whoops! So we tweaked the schedule a little (translation: we decided we would run whenever the crap we felt like until after the holidays and pick up on week 7 in January). Of course, my holidays turned out to be a little crazier than I expected, and I ran exactly once over the holidays. Sara, of course, pretty much stuck to the schedule. I should've known I was going to be the slacker!! We signed up for the Resolution Run 5K in Round Rock on New Year's Day, thinking it would be a good way to motivate us...



Race Day

I woke up on New Year's Day feeling much the same as I had the day before - like crap (by the way, I say crap a lot, so you can go ahead and get used to that). My nose was running, my throat was hurting, and I could barely breathe. I had stayed home the night before instead of going out with my friends because I wanted to try and sleep it off, but that clearly hadn't worked. But, I am a trooper (plus I already paid $20 and I wanted my t-shirt!), so I crawled out of bed, threw on my clothes and Sara and I took off.

We got to the church and went in to pick up our packets. The room was full of people, food, massage therapists set up with their tables, and just basic chaos. I got a little worried when I saw some of the people there. "Are you sure this is just a 5K?, " I asked Sara. Because some of these people looked like they were ready to run all day. I was just hoping to get through the next half hour or so and not die. I also was wearing a t-shirt and some sweat pants. And I was standing in a room full of spandex and short shorts. And I DO mean SHORT shorts. I mean, if I wanted to look at a bunch of shirtless men with tiny shorts on, I would go to a strip club (or Schlitterbahn on a normal summer day- take your pick).

So, anyway, we got our stuff and headed out to the starting line. We strategically placed ourselves behind the "hardcores", as I like to call them (translation - spandex and short shorts), and the "people that I could possibly run faster than" (translation - thank God a few people my grandma's age showed up so I don't have to finish last). Needless to say, we were towards the back.

When the bullhorn sounded (What, they can't even spring for a real starter gun? What did my $20 go to?), we took off. I pretty much started hacking right away, but I was determined to keep going, even though I was "running" slower than I could normally crawl on my hands and knees. Sara, feeling sorry for me (or maybe she was just scared I would die and all those other people would just run over my dead body and keep going), stayed with me for the first mile or so. But she finally went ahead and ran at a normal pace. Amazingly, my body kept running, even though I was coughing and could barely breathe the whole time. I had jacked one of my kids' iPod Shuffles to use, so at least I had some music to listen to. Although, the kid I jacked it from is only 9, so it was mostly songs from musicals he was doing at church and TBCH. So it was a pretty interesting playlist. (Go, Go, Goliath; Nothing Ever Happens in Bethlehem; The Slingshot Heard 'Round the World; just to name a few).

I crossed the finish line after 37 minutes. PATHETIC. But hey, I was just happy to be done. Sara and I were going to stay for all the post-race festivities and door prizes and what not, but we decided we would rather just go eat. Hope I didn't win a big-screen TV or anything...not that I would have time to watch it with all this running.

Here is our "after" picture. I would post our "before" picture, but the lady we asked to take it didn't really give us any notice and we look pretty jacked up:

So that was New Year's Day. I'm feeling better this week, and I am up to running 4 miles a day. Tomorrow I have to run 5. Blah. So far, so good, I guess. Every time I run, I feel less and less like I want to die, so that is a start. Haha.

Well, this is a pretty long post, but I wanted to catch you up to speed. Stay tuned for more super exciting updates! :-)

Janell