Soccer Ball Run

Today was the first day of marathon training! I was super excited, but a little nervous because I haven't been diligent about running since high school cross country ended. It's been two years since then and I mostly went running only when I was incredibly stressed or upset about something until now.

So far Meesh and I have recruited two other people to run the marathon with us. Our roommate, Shazaam, was pretty nervous about it when I showed her the training schedule. "We start out with three miles?" She exclaimed. I reassured her that it wouldn't be that bad and that three miles really isn't too far. She just looked at me with huge eyes.

Meesh had to run earlier than the rest of us today, because she had homework to do, but around 7:45pm we headed up to the upper fields of the school. As the three of us were walking Shazaam kept asking us how we had talked her into doing this. "I would rather get fat and be lazy," she declared. That made me laugh. Yesterday we had gone onto mapmyrun.com and looked up the distance of a loop around the fields, because there is a small trail there. It is seven laps on an incline to make three miles.

When we were at the top of the hill we found a lonely, abandoned soccer ball by a tree. When Kal pointed it out I told him we would get it on our last lap. As promised, on our last lap I kicked it out from under the tree and we kicked it back and forth down the hill to the end of our course. We finished at a time of 30:45. To keep ourselves occupied until Shazaam passed over the finish, Kal and I kicked the ball around for a while. At 38:55 Shazaam finished her first marathon training run. Kal and I cheered her on and high-fived her at the end. I know she's proud of herself for running the three miles, even though she was nervous about doing it. I am proud of her too. It was the first step for all of us.

I printed out running logs for all of us so that we can map our progress. There is a column for us to write goals for the future or talk about how we felt during the run. Shazaam wrote something like, "I felt horrible and I would rather just get fat." After reading this to Kal and I she looked up at us with a content look on her face. Tomorrow we are cross-training.

Marathon Madness Begins

During my first semester of college I tried to convince my roommate, Meesh, to come play volleyball with me. She drew me a picture to illustrate how she felt about that idea. In the picture there were several people trying to play volleyball, but horrible injuries befell every person on the court. One guy was being strangled from being twisted into the net by the throat. Another person was receiving the ball only to have her arms broken all the way through, bones poking out and all. Yet another boy was getting his head smashed into the court floor face first (his teeth were flying everywhere). These were only a few of the people in her drawing. Her point made, very dramatically, I gave up on persuading her to come play volleyball; at least for that night.

On Sunday I convinced Meesh to come run an old cross country workout with a friend and I called three-man pursuits. This involves three people running laps around a football field. One person sprints ahead of the others while they jog slowly. The first person has to catch the other two from behind. When they catch up, the next person goes, and then the third person when the second catches up. It is a timed exercise so the faster you run the more times you have to sprint ahead. I have been trying to get someone to do this workout with me for two years and finally two people were willing to give it a go! You can only imagine my excitement.

We ran the workout for 30 minutes and at the end Meesh said to me, "That actually wasn't as bad as I expected it to be." That is where my next mad idea started to creep into my mind.

"Meesh! Let's run a marathon!" I was afraid I had said it too soon and scared her away from the idea, but she actually agreed. We are now planning to run a Marathon in June. That gives us about eight months to train. We have set ourselves the following goals:

1. Eat less sugar.

2. Eat more protein.

3. Go to bed at a more reasonable time (this is a hard one in college).

4. Do not sleep past 8:00am.

5. Follow the training schedule I looked up online. This involves one long run, two days spent resting or cross-training, one day cross training, two shorter runs, and an easy short run every week. It gradually gets harder by the week.

6. Drink a lot of water.

7. Do well in school.

We are so excited to get started! We plan on starting the training program on Monday. Wish us luck!