Running, running, running…
My brother talked me into running in the Little Rock Marathon with him in March. That’s not exactly correct. My brother talked me into running a half-marathon relay in March– 6.8 miles. When you compare that to a real marathon, it doesn’t sound so bad. When you compare it to my previous record of 1 mile for the 7th grade physical fitness test, it’s a lot of miles.
I started “training” in October by trying to run one whole mile without stopping to walk. I made it about 3/4 of a mile. I was pretty proud of myself.
By Christmas, I could run 3 whole miles without stopping. Now I’m up to 5. I haven’t worked my way up to 6 yet, but I’m supposed to get there by next Saturday.
The race is 4 weeks from Sunday, which is kind of scary. My brother told me he was going to put down that we could run the whole relay in 140 minutes, which gives me 70 minutes to run 6.8 miles. I’m a little terrified that it might actually take me 120 minutes to run 6.8 miles, and then my brother will have to book it to run the other 6.8 miles in 20 minutes!
Seriously, he asked me how long I thought it would take, and I had no idea. I haven’t run 6.8 miles yet! I told him I could run 5 miles in 55-60 minutes, so he kind of added a mile and a half at that rate. If I actually end up running 5 miles in 55 minutes, I might end up crawling the last mile and half to the finish line, so that theory would be debunked.
My marathon tips email today suggested that I buy some new tennis shoes now so that I can break them in before the race. I think I might get some knee pads, too, just in case.
Filed under: Uncategorized on February 1st, 2007
Jennifer – Congrats on the running/training. I’m very impressed. My mom was a runner and I sat and cheered at a number of races, but I could never catch the running bug. I’m embarrased to say I even tried a few tricks to get out of those junior high mile runs. I haven’t read any blogs in a while and I was catching up on yours, the not liking kids entry caught my attention. I have been amazed by comments myself…the best being “Your family is complete” all because I had a boy and a girl. But I’m sure if I’d had 2 boys people would assume I would try for a third just to have a girl. Who knows if I’ll have another or not, but it’s sad that the gender order of your children makes it more or less acceptable to have another one. Sorry for the RANT…Amy
Thanks, Amy. I ranted quite a bit about that subject myself.