6 miles and runnin'....

So, I ran my 6 miles today. I'm proud of myself because that's the longest run I've been on in several years.

Let me just say this: I am not a long distance runner. That's Julie. She could go on for days. As for me, I ran cross country in middle school and I was good. In fact, I bet middle school me could run a faster mile than me today. I mostly just ran XC to keep in shape for hurdles, which is where my running passion lies. Throughout high school, I ran hurdles, with an occasional 400m here and there. I broke my arm sophomore year and was forced to run the 800m, much to my displeasure. Long-slow distance runs, an essential part of sprint training, was my least favorite practice.

Don't get the wrong idea, though. I really want to run this marathon and I'm going to, for a multitude of reasons. Even in the early weeks of training, I get anxious on days that I don't run. I get excited while lacing up my shoes and getting ready to head out the door. After that first mile, I fall into a rhythm and feel like I could run forever...or maybe just for 26.2 miles.

On Sunday, Julie and I are going to run 8 miles. That's a long run, for either of us and quite possibly the longest run either of us have ever been on. I think that training together will be really excellent for both of us -- Julie is great at keeping it at a steady pace and I'm great at picking it up and pushing the pace. I am not good at picking out a reasonable pace for long distances at all. My instinct is just to run run run as fast as I can. Let's see how Sunday goes.

This is really happening

I smell lovely. And by lovely, I mean sweaty.

I just returned from my third run in the past three days. Today's was a medium-paced three miles. Yesterday's clocked in at about 6 miles and Tuesday's was something like 5. The earlier two were at a much slower pace, primarily because it was much hotter than necessary and, uh, I had not been running in forever. And I should probably also mention something that I discovered post-run on Tuesday: registration for the 2009 Boston Marathon is next Wednesday.

That snuck up on me.

It's been my plan for a long time to participate in the marathon and I decided this past spring that next spring would be my year. So I ran a lot while I was in Paris to try to keep my endurance up then returned to Boston, where I completely stopped running. Tuesday's weather was phenomenal and I had lots of spare time, so I took to the streets. I was appalled by how out of shape I was. Appalled. Then I remembered how I was going to run the marathon next year and took a quick spin on the internet. So, uh, next Wednesday.

I recruited my BFFL Cait to run with me. And that was that.

Well, not quite. We have some important decisions to make within the next week or so. Obviously neither of us has ever run a marathon before so qualifying at this point is out of the question. This means that we have to raise some serious funds for a charity. There are 18 different charities to choose from, so we're going to apply to a handful. I made some phone calls yesterday, printed out some applications and await to hear some results. In the meantime, we're getting our train on. Yesterday, Cait looked up a variety of training schedules and we're planning to combine two. I've also given up some nastier habits, aka drinking alcohol, soda, etc. We're both running according to schedule - I need to take a day off tomorrow, Cait took today off. And we hope to cross train pretty intensively. We both bike to work on the daily. Additionally, we'll add some swimming, basketball (or just "shooting hoops" as we discussed yesterday) and weight lifting. Work it.

This is going to be interesting.