Marathon Training 2/14/09

So here you all go-another installment of the marathon training! So I have a 25K (15.5 miles-my math skills are improving!) coming up at the end of Feb. Then a half marathon in Little Rock, who's motto is 'Got hills?' What the heck was I thinking! OKC Marathon in April, then the biggest daddy of them all San Francisco in July.

So the marathon is starting to feel real! I have officially completed my longest run to date of 14 miles. It was rough; it involved getting up in what I classify as the middle of the night (5 a.m.) on a Saturday morning in the cold to go run for several hours. Wow-I may need to rethink of what I classifly as fun!

As you all know from the last email I have been running with a group. But, I mainly run with three girls. It is kind of unusual for us all to run together, but I almost always run with on of them. One of the girls I have run with from the beginning set up a new acquaintance of hers, and me up on a ‘running date.’ Hence, I am meeting some girl in a parking lot that I have never met to go run together. She turns out to be super runner! She has been challenging me to run faster. Of course the first time, I thought I might pass out from lack of breath, because I was too embarrassed to tell her that I could not run at super human speeds. But, we have become good running buddies, and have recently had a couple of notable runs together.

1) We were running on a rather new trail, and ran by a little girl on her bike. She called out ‘hey runner girls!’ It was rather cute. My new running buddy swears she has not had as much attention from passer bys as she has had running with our little group. Just proof of what a great looking group of girls we are!

2) We went out running with a group of older gentlemen one unseasonably warm night. We decided to run a little extra (a couple of miles). We got more history on the houses in Tulsa than I have ever heard in my entire life (we ran by someone from Hee-Haw's house)! Plus, I should note that I was super impressed/disappointed that we were running with these men that had probably a good 30 years on us.

The other notable run I have had recently was a run with one of the other girls. We were scheduled to run 10 miles. But, we had discovered that it was an out and back, that could be made into a loop if you ran an extra 1 ½. We had both agreed at the beginning that we didn’t want to be over achievers, so we were only going to run the 10 miles. Well, that all changed after we ran down the ‘steep mountain’ in Turkey Mountain. When it became clear that there was no way in the world that we would be able to make it back up the sucker, we signed ourselves up for the extra 1 ½ no problem!

These girls do tease me about always trying to get out of running hills. The big question-how am I going to run SF??

Of course, we have met a lot of characters along the way, the man who does not drink milk because it creates extra mucus, but continues to smoke so that he has something to do with his brother in law. The man that promotes running with ‘your flow.’

Anyways, I just want to thank all of the girls for helping me along the way! I could not have made it this far in the program with out them.

Oh, and I just want to share that I saw a man wearing some sort of flame colored tights this weekend, so don’t forget to keep passing on the word about men and tights.