Week One - Success

I think I am finally out of the funk I found myself in last week. I did get through all of my training runs successfully and have completed 6.25% of my marathon training:) Hooray for me!

Saturday was the first long run and it was AWESOME! Nike Run Club organizes group runs for folks like me training for the marathon - which is perfect to keep me on track with and true to the long runs. It was neat to see 60'ish people out at 6:30am on a Saturday all chipper and ready to run. They had pace groups to ensure we would all be training with people of similar speed / ability. Karen - the leader of my pace group was very upbeat and motivating. She ran 7 miles right along side us - talking, talking, talking about the weeks to come, about the 25 marathons she has run, about how she is going to convince us all that it is better to run without our iPods - WHAT? Hell no - I need my music to keep me going. How anyone gets through hours of training - or a 4 + hour race without the distraction of music is beyond me. Anyhow...at the end of the 7 miles of running in the hot sun she had barely broken a sweat and was nowhere close to being out of breath. The 12 of us in her group were all red faced and dripping - but we all finished and no one died. And I am very excited about the next long run.

Sunday we were at the lake in Michigan and Jeff and I took advantage of having the grandparents there to hang with the boys at the lake while we went off for a run. OMG - the hills out there can really kick your ass! What a workout! I bet my next run in the flat lands of Naperville will be a piece of cake.

One last thing - my new running gadget - the Garmin Forerunner - LOVE IT! So, after a run I put my forerunner on the docking station and it feeds all of my workout data. I can view my pace, distance, calories burned, heart rate, and the coolest thing of all - it shows me a map of the route I ran. It will even reenact my run - how cool is that? I still have my Nike + system which I will continue to use so I don't feel like I lost the first 140 miles of training - it makes me feel good to watch that number grow! Plus - how else will I know when I hit the 500 mile mark and need a new pair of shoes??? :)