The first run...........

Saturday 16th Feb, was my first day of formal training! So I got my butt out of bed at like 6.30 am and drove off to a running store in Los Gatos that seems to be the local AIDS marathon hangout of choice. We got to stand around in the cold and get a quick pep talk, then we walked over to the Los Gatos creek trail for our first run. We start at 3 miles, then every week increase a mile until we hit 13, then the program changes a bit as we build up to 26.2. Yes folks, in 11 weeks I’ll run a half marathon. I was quite nervous seeing all these folks all dressed up for the ocassion, gloves, proper shoes, water bottle packs - how do I compete with them, hopfully I will not be the 1st one to drop out..

So I started off at a good running pace. They caught up to me and then some, lol… It is a LOT less hilly than my park trail, and I was running a good most of that first mile. I walked quite a bit on the return 1.5 miles, and kinda paced myself by watching a couple of women who started off just ahead of me. They were doing pretty good, so I decided to stalk them (not literally) Birtney and Monica were keeping good time, I liked them. So without too much of huffing and puffing we crossed the finish line at 11.30mins per mile. Not bad I'd say...

I’m now in a pace group with 4 women, and our target pace (about a min slower than 3 mile speed) is 12:30/mile, so about 5.5 hours for the whole marathon. I’m like, WOW, I might not only finish a marathon but do it in under 6 hours? cool huh??. I’m quite certain I’ll be able to tell you all about them before long, as we’ve got a lot of miles to go together.

All in all I am very excited. I’m very proud of my pace, and I don’t hurt as much as I feared. There were a few little quirks with the run. Like these fancy runners water bottles. Yeah, I had to get taught how to get the darned thing to work. Oh well… But all in all I’m very excited and it was a BLAST to run with the group - everyone is extremely supportive and enthusiastic. Team in Training was also all over the place and pretty much any runner waved and smiled at any other. Lots of people starting marathon training at the creek today.

So as soon as I got in my car, totally high on adrenaline, I called Saswata and told him about my accomplishment - great job baby, Im proud of you..thats all I needed to hear.. All in all a very good start. I’m a lot less worried and very much looking forward to it! I had enough energy when I got home to take the kids to the park and then out for lunch. Its going to be a great run..