3.2 miles
Week Four Starts

Drum roll please…..yes ladies and gentlemen yours truly completed three miles (3.2 miles to be exact) of continuous running. The best part is that it was totally an unplanned event…at least partially unplanned anyway. This is what happened…

Today my trusty schedule said that I needed to run/wog at least 40-45 mins. In my former non-running life that in itself would be a great accomplishment. However, being that I am training for a marathon, 40-45 mins will ultimately be a mere warm up on game day. That reality is quite frightening, but I try to focus on the smaller achievements that I am making on the way to my goal of 26.2.

Over the weekend, I clocked a three mile route (3.2 actually, but who other than me really cares about a .2) around my neighborhood using my car odometer. If you do not know this about me already, you will soon learn that I can be schedule oriented. (Yes, I was that mom in Disney World carrying around the agenda she created for the day and checked things off upon completion. Hey, at least I did not require everyone in my family to wear the same color shirt.) I have applied my talent of schedule making and following to my marathon training and I have found it to be extremely effective thus far.

I record my distance and time on my marathon-training calendar and I check off each training day. If for some reason I miss a training day (which I might add has not happened often), I also record that in the aforementioned marathon-training log. As you can see, I take this training very seriously or is it the recording and keeping the schedule that I take seriously…hmmm…-interesting question. I will let you ponder that later. My point is that I like to know (I must know) my time and distance.

Okay, so that brings me to accidentally running 3.2 miles. I know it is hard to believe, how someone can accidentally run any distance. Perhaps I am the first to accomplish such a feat, but I did not set out to run the entire route. My goal for today was to run for my “typical” (for like the past week) continuous run of 25 mins and then walk for 3-4 mins run some more and keep going back and forth until my watch reads at least 40 mins and I can put another training day on my log as completed.

I started out on my run and everything was going well. It was 5:00pm so needless to say, here in Maryland during the month of January it was cold, but I am getting used to it. (kind of scary) Besides today was a warmer 36 degrees not the 22 degrees of a few days ago. I donned my cold weather training gear and turned up the volume on the ipod and I was on my way. I have learned over the past week the approximate location along my route when I will hit the 25 mins point. I told myself that today I would not check my watch at that point, but that I would wait and try and push myself to the point where I feel like I HAVE to walk and then check my watch.

Eventually, when I thought I could run no more I slowly pushed back my sleeve to expose my pretty pink running watch and what did mine eyes see? 00:00 I checked one more time to make sure that I wasn't just misreading the obvious 00:00.

I had forgotten to press the START button!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now, for most people this may not be that big of a deal. You people are not me however and for me well let’s just put it this way….please envision Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream or for those of you that are not familiar with said painting perhaps you may remember Macaulay Culkin from the movie Home Alone with his hands on either side of his face and his mouth wide open. Yes, that was exactly what I looked like as I tried to deal with the reality that I did not have a clue how long I had been running. So, what did I do?

I quickly assessed my options as I continued to run. I could stop running and never know how long I ran which with my obsession with “numbers”, charting, and the all powerful schedule was simply not an option. I could continue running the entire route and in to my kitchen where I could check the clock for the time because I knew what time I had left the house. I simply did not have any other choice. Therefore, right then and there I made the decision to keep running the entire route.

There you have it. That is the story of how I accidentally ran 3.2 miles. The funniest part about it all is that I never thought that I could have done it this early into my training, but I did it. Just as the Nike marketing people encourage us all to do. Just do it. Guess what, that is what I did. I did it. I did it! It is a small ant hill along this journey of mountains, but I did what I thought I could not do. That my friends is what I believe will carry me to my goal.


Quote for Week 4:
Just do it.
-Nike Slogan