Getting Portland Fit...Slowly.

Four weeks ago, I started training for a marathon through a training program called Portland Fit. Let me be clear: I thought I was training for a half-marathon. However, upon arrival and receiving our schedule for the next 27 weeks of our lives, the final run was indeed the Portland Marathon. I had a brief moment of hesitation where I seriously considered backing out of this crazy venture, but ultimately decided to ignore my weak/lazy side, and channel my inner-runner.

I was not born to run. No. It's not that I ever disliked running, but it was never an athletic activity I elected to do on a regular basis. I much prefer to get my exercise in other ways. As a result, I have some shall we say, confidence issues when it comes to running.

I have been at this now for 4 weeks. Every Saturday at 8am, hundreds of people gather on NW 21st and NW Raleigh to run together. Then we have individual runs 3 times a week. The first weekend we ran 3 miles as a "timed trial" to place us into running groups with people of our similar ability and speed. Going into this, I told one of the staff members that they could just put me in the slowest group and we could just forget the timed trial and go to brunch. (The staff person was not having my "sense of humor"). Over the weeks, I have found that my endurance is already improving and I am actually NOT has horrific of a runner as I thought! Slow. Yes. Horrible? No.

Every time I finish a run I'm slightly amazed I did it. Today we finished our 6 mile run and I am still giving myself a pat on the back.

I will keep the updates coming on my running adventure as they come!