13.1 miles to victory

12 weeks and 13.1 miles.

I am very intimidated.

I am not a runner to say the least. I never have been. I was a gymanst for many years and even then I never felt I had the endurance I should have. I always wished I could be one of those people that could just pick up and run....didn't have to go to the gym to get on a piece of equipment to work out, but could just thrown on some shoes and go. I had this vision of it being cathardic. Stress relieving. Then I got it in my head that I wanted to run a half marathon and I started "pre-training"......ITS BORING! I am not sure if at 29 I have suddenly developed ADD or what, but I get sidetracked after about 15 minutes of jogging and am only able to push myself for about another 5 (which in my slow body is just about 1.5 miles....ya, I am very slow). It could be that I am in Ohio (Cleveland to be exact...yes, just voted most miserable city in the country) and it is February and cold and snowy and I am forced to run on a treadmill therefore I can't stop looking at the clock. Maybe it would be better outside, I don't know. We will have to wait and see. But yes, I get very bored.

So let me just say why I am doing this. Last year (Jan-April 2009) I lost about 25 lbs. Yay me =) It felt good and to be honest it came off pretty easy. I had spent 5 years being lazy and when I decided to take life "by the balls" and workout again my body reacted quite nicely. I knew at that point I had more to go, but I wanted to see how easy it would be to keep it off and not gain anything back. Turns out, a year later I haven't worked that hard at keeping it off, just changed some eating habits, work out moderatly, and I have managed to not only not gain anything back but lose about 5 more. Now, I still have about 20 more to lose to be ideally where I want to be. I am short, small framed, I shouldn't be nearly as big as I still am. Anyway, I know the last 20 are hard and I assumed that I would have to do something a lot harder to get it off then what I had last year. So the idea of finally trying to run a half-marathon came to me. What better time than now. So, in October I started jogging to get my body used to it....ya, it didn't like it so much. I took the Holiday's off, not really by choice, but I had no time. January I traveled a lot and then Feb. 1st came and I started jogging again. This time it was not so bad and I found that I could jog for 20 min and not get soar or winded....just bored.

Today starts the "official" 12 week training program for the race. May 16th, Cleveland Half-Marathon. I am totally intimidated. I know that if I can't do it I can always end up running the 5k or 10k (neither of which I have done before either), but I really want this, and I am stubborn. So, I might try and keep some sort of log on here, I may need some motivation (if anyone stumbles on this and wants to give me some), but most of all, I need to do this for me. I need to prove that after all I have been through and done that I can still put my mind to something and succeed. Running may seem like a small accomplishment, but it is a metaphor for success to me at this point....I can do it, and I will.