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.