2 weeks to go

Well, here we go.... not yet. But soon. 

It was a momentary blend of weakness and machismo. My good friend Nick and I were talking at the office with my wife, Megan (yes, we all work together. I'm sure there is a good sitcom in there somewhere but for now we'll have to settle for a blog). Somehow we got onto the subject of running and the Disney half marathon that happens every January. Then I learned a lesson the hard way: don't open your mouth with your wife present.  Without even a second thought I effortlessly claim "I'll run it". With that, Nick learned an equally important lesson: don't ever open your mouth with your friend's wife present. He retorts with pride "I'll do it with you". The next few days were a blur but that weekend we found ourselves in Nick's living room dropping about $175 a piece on entrance fees to this thing. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is!

To understand the weight of this you have to know that neither Nick nor I would consider ourselves runners. We are both well over the ideal weight for a distance runner and prior to that conversation the furthest I had ever run was a 3 mile challenge I set for myself that had me cursing the pavement and hills the whole way home.. As soon as I realized this was real I began to regret it.

It didn't take long, however, for me to realize that I was going to enjoy this. My father-in -law, who has run several races and will be running this one with us, pointed me in the direction of Jeff Galloway for a training program and Nick and I began to hit the streets together. It turns out that we weren't so bad off!

Our first run was a little over 3 miles and we did quite well. A few breaks for a little walking and some definite gasping up a monstrous hill but we made it. Since then we have done some longer runs and some cross training along the way. All in all we are up to about 6 miles without needing to stop to walk which is about 3 miles ahead of schedule when considering the official training schedule doesn't start for 2 more weeks.

I will be using that next 2 weeks to do a few more light training runs, mix in a few cross training workouts, and get this blog updated and ready to go. I hope you enjoy the updates along the way but most of all I hope you learn that big things happen in small steps.