Running

Me, and the craziness of my home after returning from my first ever race (5K) this past April. Not glamorous:

Another thing that has been taking up my time is running. I am training to run a half marathon. I am trying to follow through on my goal of running the Paris marathon 2011, and so I thought a half marathon about a half year before it was a good goal.

It has been fun....but it sure is time consuming! I do long runs on Saturday mornings (I leave the house about 5:45) and shorter runs during the week, a combination of road running and treadmill at the gym. A road run for me is only 2 miles though since I do it after Jon gets home, and the twins and Caed are manageable for him. It really is a sacrifice on the part of my family for this. I am hoping that somehow we make it through the 7 months after this for the Paris marathon.

I sometimes debate the wisdom is doing it next year, since it's been a hard few months for our family for the half marathon, but I think it's best to just keep going. I am proud of myself for keeping it up. I wish I was faster, but I'll take what I can get.

I am learning so much about running too, it's a lot of fun. I find that I am really enjoying it (besides the bit of a wall I've hit the last two weeks) and want to just keep doing it because my body can do it. Although I probably can have better posture/form, it's not like swimming where I've got to be taught certain strokes, or bike riding where I've got to own a bike, it's more accessible then that and I like that. I recently finished the book Born to Run. Loved it. But I love that style of writing anyway.

I am still figuring out my preferences as far as carrying water, when to wait to eat, listening to music (which is at a bit of a negotiating stage right now. My ipod isn't working, and I've been listening to Pandora on my phone with headphones. I have an arm band for the ipod, but for now I am sticking my phone in the tiny pocket in my running shorts, which gets the phone wet from my sweating!) do I carry some energy things with me for the longer runs, and talking while running when I'm with friends.

I was supposed to run 12 miles last Saturday but was in a bit of a funk, and ended up only running/ walking 6. This weekend it's back down to 10. I'll go with that, and get 12 the following weekend. That's the farthest this training plan has us go.

So here's to a little more time come a month, but only briefly, because I'll need to train to run 26.2 miles soon enough!