Marathon Training

So my senior year of college, I made the decision to stop cheering. I started participating in the SPORT at the age of 4 and never missed a year until the age of 21. I even helped coach for a year at my high school my freshman year at Carolina. After 18(ish) years, I needed a break. But completely halting an athletic activity that consumed my life 4 days a week left me bored and feeling weak and out of shape. So...around Christmas time my senior year I let my good friend Abby talk me into training for a marathon with her. It was a little bit insane, as I had never run more than a 5k, but what the heck. We began our training in January and after going through one pair of tennis shoes, knee injuries, and long horrible Sunday runs, we completed our marathon on May 1 (a few days before graduation) in Gettysburg.

Finishing that marathon was one of the most fulfilling and hardest thing that I have ever done in my life. At about mile 20, I swore to myself that I would never run more than a mile or two at a time again because I honestly felt life dying. I will always remember the 40-something lady running by us around that time, who when she found out it was our first marathon said, "..once you finish this, you'll promise yourself you will never put your body through another marathon and by the time you get home you'll be so excited to run another race you'll start googling your next one to enter. It is addicting." At the time I thought she was absolutely insane, but after a few weeks of rest I began to feel the itch.

It turns out I wasn't the only one. My bff Kathryn also really wanted to get into running and asked if I would train and run the Gboro Cannonball Run Half Marathon with her in October. So the training has begun again! With the addition of a new Garmin GPS watch (probably my fav investment this summer) tracking our training has become a lot more fun.

For example, our latest 6 miler around NCSU's campus:


Even though I'll be in Omaha the last few months before the race and Kathryn will be in Boca, FL, the training will continue and come October we will both complete our first half marathon! 


Check out Kathryn's blog @ http://thekackidaily.blogspot.com/ :). Plenty more blogs on training will come!