The Excitement Builds

To all my friends that know how hard I work, I want to "Thank You" for your encouraging words. Please don't stop during my training! You'll never know how much it helps me as I replay your words over and over in my mind when I run. As my mileage builds each week preparing for the marathon, it gets more and more exciting. I am amazed to see how much my body can take.

Last week I ran a distance I've not done before...15 miles!! This was a milestone for me! It was the most exciting day I've had in a very long time. I remember how running my first double-digit mile (10) made me feel this way, too. And, 15 had me soaring like that one did. I had no idea I would be able to pull it off without walking. That was all I could talk about for days and still do! It just amazed me that I was able to do this. And, on top of that, my birthday was the next day! Now, being 55 and having not run for that long, it really was the icing on my cake.

Running the 15 presented itself with a couple of challenges. These were new for me. First off, my iPod had run down!!! Grrrrr...this has never happened to me before and here I am getting ready to put in a long run with nothing to keep my mind off of any negative things I might experience. The adjustments that had to be made were hearing my foot strikes and hearing my breathing. Without noise to drown these out, it "sounds" like I am laboring. I struggled through the first couple of miles and told Frank I wasn't sure I was going to make it. But we kept going and talking and before long, I didn't hear any of this. The second thing was having to discard some of the extra clothing I layered because it was cool when we started. I mean, before we got to 3 miles the long pants were history!! Wearing them around my waist felt funny but luckily the route we were running took us back by the truck about halfway through so I left them there and felt so freed up again.

All along the run, we'd check with one another to see if the other was feeling okay. We weren't struggling at all. We took our GU's, water and aide and were doing fine...UNTIL we entered the 14th mile. As a matter of fact, we had just commented how well we were feeling and felt the run was going to be uneventful. It was time for another GU about the 13th mile but decided since we were close to finishing and felt so good that we'd not do it...WRONG!! The last half mile we struggled some. Both of us had a great learning curve regarding energy boosts, ha! I honestly believe if we had taken the last GU we'd have finished with flying colors.

We are "trying" to slow our pace down and it is probably the MOST difficult thing we either one have battled so far. All the charts say the absolute fastest we should run is a 10:30 pace and our pace for 15 miles was 10:20. This is something we will work on this next time. All in all, I felt our run was an absolute success!! We hydrated and nourished well during and afterward as we should. On top of that, we neither one was sore the following days...woo-hoo!

As far as the rest of the week, it went well, too. I'm beginning to focus more on core workouts and cross training. From that, I've been a little sore...but a good kind of sore. Adjustments had to be made in my schedule because of being out of town (traveling days) so there was an extra rest day. The week's workout looks like this:

Sunday: Rest
Monday: 7 TM miles plus core workout
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: 15 miles
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 4 miles with overall workout
Saturday: 5 miles biking and long overall workout

The week ended with 26 miles run, 5 biking miles and 3 days of overall workouts. Being excited about our 15 mile milestone, I had to take some pictures.

Here Frank and I are right after the 15 miles. I was soooo stoked!!

Here Kent and I are very happy of our accomplishments. He has been struggling with some foot pain but still got in his 8 miles. Love you!!

There's NO way I could do any of this without both these guys! They both encourage me in many ways!!