My first attempt at blogging centered around my quest to complete my first half marathon. After a few posts, I realized that my weekly workouts weren’t really the most interesting of topics. That being said, behind my wedding of course, the half marathon was definitely one of the top 5 days of my life. And, fitness is a huge part of my life, and seriously, if I can do it, anyone can do it, so I really want to document the entire process. To spare anyone reading this, I’ll break this into several posts.
And so our journey begins…
I had always wanted to run a half marathon…or really rather to be able to say I had run a half marathon. But then again, I’ve also always wanted to be able to say I’ve gone skydiving, and sometimes I think jumping out of a plane might be slightly less terrifying than running 13.1 miles. I’ve always been an athlete…even a runner (at least in high school), but before I tried training, I could count the number of times I had run 3 miles on one hand…actually on one finger. See, one day in high school, it snowed, so track practice got cancelled, but my mom couldn’t pick me up right away after school. There were others in the same boat, but they were all distance runners. They went on a “short” run which was 3 miles…not to mention one that ended with a huge hill (I think the street name was Pamela – someone from JC back me up on that). But, being the competitor that I am, I had to prove I could keep up with them. I was pretty miserable every step of the way, but by god, my pride wouldn’t let me quit. Fast forward 13 ½ years to July, 2010 when completely out of nowhere, I was reading random articles online about fitness, and I came across one blogger who had competed in the Disney Princess Half Marathon. If you’ve known me for a long time, you know I’ve always been quite the tomboy. But seriously, how can you resist tiaras, sparkles and pink tutus?? So, I did a little more research about the race and noticed that the race beneficiary was the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society…a cause which is obviously very near and dear to my heart. That almost sealed the deal for me, but I was still a little unsure. As I glanced down at my calendar, I realized that I was learning of this race on the 4th anniversary of the day my mom died.
At that point, I was 99% committed…all I needed was someone to go with. Adam’s an amazing husband, but this couldn’t be further from his comfort zone. So, I asked my 2 closest friends who I thought would be into doing a half marathon. Much to my delight, my best friend from age 3, Kelly, agreed to at least consider it. We gave ourselves a month to think it over, until the early bird registration deadline (although seriously, what’s an extra $10 when you’re paying $120 for a race?). I have always admired Kelly’s spirit of adventure. She was even less of a runner than I was, but she was completely up for giving it a shot. In August, we were still not too confident in our abilities to actually do a half marathon, but we decided that nothing was going to make the decision any easier, so we chose to just suck it up and sign up. Talking via IM the whole time, we registered together…our favorite part definitely being when it asked us our favorite Disney princess (I chose Jasmine, and Kelly chose Ariel). Which would you be?
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