The First Week of My Journey

Why Am I Doing This?

Many year ago when I was sitting in my 7th grade history class my teacher told us the story of a Greek soldier named Pheidippides (feel free to wiki this) who fought in the Battle of Marathon. Pheidippides was the messenger who ran from Marathon to Athens to spread the good news of the battle. When he arrived in Athens he yelled “Nike!” (or victory) and then dropped dead.

I learned two things that day 1) contrary to popular belief Nike does not mean “just do it.” 2) Pheidippides run is the reasons that Marathons are 26.2 miles. For some reason this story always stuck with me. Well it finally became relevant in my life 15+ years later as I have decided to run a marathon! That’s right on October 17th I’m running (ironically) in the Nike Women’s marathon in San Francisco!

I have a strong feeling that Pheidippides died on the spot at the end of his marathon because he did not train properly before hand. To ensure that I don’t face the same fate I’m participating in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Societies (LLS) Team and Training Program (TNT). I have to raise $3,900 for LLS to participate in the race. TNT is a great program, and hopefully with the help of my coaches and mentors I will be able to yell “Nike” at the end of the race in good health.

The reason I'm doing this is pretty straight forward: I always wanted to run a marathon. I'm 29 and it seemed like a nice challenging pre 30 goal. Yeah I was serious about the straight forward part.

Now, I’m a woman that doesn’t even run for the bus let alone 26.2 miles! So I thought it would be interesting to share the experience of a non runner who woke up one day and decided to run a marathon. I will share with you all the highs and lows of my training. Hopefully I’ll entertain the non runners and maybe the runners will be entertained and provide me with some training tips. I also hope you all will feel compelled to donate to the cause, you can visit the links below.

You can subscribe to my blog or I can send it to you on a weekly basis (but hopefully you’ll find it so fascinating that you’ll subscribe!)

So let’s get down to it!

June 5, 2010

This was the official kick off to the TNT season, our first official training session. The TNT program is broken out into different teams. I’m on the Brooklyn team because I live in BK. But my friend Nicaila, who I signed up with, is on the Manhattan team because she lives in the Bronx. Nicaila seemed a little nervous about the first practice so for moral support I left the tranquility of Brooklyn and headed to Central Park to kick off the season with her.

Let me set the scene: One I am NOT a morning person, so this journey to Central Park from Brooklyn early on a Saturday morning was already a stretch. Two, (and only true New Yorkers will appreciate this) the damn A train was running local! So now I’m literally running late. I get to Central Park and encounter a sea of people doing a charity walk. I get swept into the crowd but finally find the TNT group.

After a rev up talk and a mission moment (I’ll explain in another post) from our coaches we were broken out by race and shortly after we started running. It was a little difficult to run around all of the walkers and I made a note to self about the heat. It was so hot and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was getting a jacked up sports bra tan while I was running. All in all they kept it light for the first training session. We did the lower loop of central park and some light stretching after. While I didn’t clock the run I doubt that it was more than 2 miles.

What Did I Learn About Running That Day?

1) If you live in Brooklyn and want to go running in central park on a Saturday morning DO NOT trust the A train!
2) Saturday morning is probably the worst time to run in Central Park because it’s so crowded
3) When running in the summer, if you want to avoid jacked up tan lines, the earlier you run the better!

June 8, 2010

Through TNT we train as a team Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings. So after a tiring day at work I dragged myself to Prospect Park for our training session. The upside? I was at least back to the tranquility of Brooklyn. Side note a year ago I lived in Harlem and rarely left the island of Manhattan. The thought of going to the outer boroughs was exhausting, so it’s kinda funny to me that I love Brooklyn so much now.

The Tuesday training sessions are more technical, we work on strength training, technique, etc. Yesterday we took a short jog to the interior of the park and then did some strength training. The strength training was NOT easy: lunges, squats, planks, leg lifts. I was thinking to myself are they serious right now!?! But they were and guess who felt like they had rubber legs on the way home?...that would be me. Oh did I mention that they had me on the grass doing ab work!?! Even though we weren’t running I was spent by the end of training.

What Did I Learn About Running That Day?

1) Strength training is just as important as running because it helps prevent injuries but it also tires you out just as much as running
2) While I love Prospect Park…I do not like laying on the grass to do ab work
3) Nothing about this process is going to be easy

That’s it for this week, tune in next week folks!