So I Run....

I have turned into that crazy runner friend. You know, the one that can only talk about the races she has ran or is going to run, who talks about carb loading, and can't hang out because she has a long training run. Yup, that girl.

Let me start this by saying I was not athletic in high school. I was the girl who failed gym, and had to take three periods of gym back to back senior year so I could graduate. Hated gym, hated exercise, hated everything about it.

Fast forward thru all of my weight loss. Found a love of Zumba. Yadda yadda ya. In February of 2013, I was sitting around, minding my own business, when my girlfriend was like, hey, we should do a 5k.

Insert bank stare here. HUH?? Has she met me? The most exercise I got was Zumba. I didn't run, unless it was away from something. But ok, I can accept a challenge. We decided to sign up for Color Me Rad. If you aren't familiar with it, it's  5K where at certain parts of it, they throw colored powder at you, and then at the end, you and your friends throw colored powder at each other, and you turn out to be a big pink and orange mess.

Seems harmless right?

So we signed up for the race. We downloaded the Couch to 5K app. We got our butts to the gym, hopped on a treadmill, and nearly died after the first five minutes. No kidding. C25K is a program that spreads out over 8 weeks. You start out slow, running 30 seconds, then walking 2 minutes. As you progress thru the weeks, the intervals change, focusing on more running and less walking, until at the end, you run a 5K. That first time we hopped on the treadmill, we literally both almost died. We both thought, "This thing wants us to run for 30 seconds?? Are you crazy??" We did not die like we thought we were going to. But we limped home, and were back at it 3 days later.

We finished Color Me Rad in 38 minutes, which was huge for us!

I had so much fun, I signed up for Color Run in August. (Same concept, different name). Somehow, I managed to finish that in around 30 minutes!

OMG, was I running? Me, clutzy, clumsy, hates strenuous physical effort me, a runner? The strange thing was, I LIKED it. I am always so busy between work, school, and family, that I forget to do something for me. The time I spent running was my time to  myself. I let my mind wander, listed to my headphones, and just went!

A couple months after the Color Run, I was playing on Facebook, and got drawn into someone's post about running a race in Disney. HUH?? You can run races in Disney? I did some poking around, and discovered that you can run all sorts of races at Disney. Short ones, long ones. I wanted to do that! I love Disney, what better thing to do then to run through the happiest place on earth? With some more poking and digging, I discovered Disney World's first race of the year is Marathon Weekend. It's a whole weekend of races! And Marathon weekend has a challenge called the Dopey Challenge. It's four races (a 5k, a 10k, a half marathon, and a full marathon), over four days, for a total of 48.6 miles. I wanted to do that, never mind that all I had run up to this point was two 5k's. I signed up for it as soon as it opened.

My friends thought I was out of my mind. Like really out of my mind. I think they were ready to have me committed. And I have to admit that it was a crazy thing to do. But I am stubborn as hell, and let someone try to tell me I can't do something, I will do my damnedest to prove them wrong.

So the first thing I had to do after signing up for Dopey was get a proof of time. You want to submit a POT so Disney can place you in a corral, and hopefully it is not the last corral (The better the corral you get placed in, the better the cushion that you have). I signed up for the May 2014 Buffalo Half Marathon. I downloaded Couch to Half Marathon, and started training 3-4 days a week.

And guess what? I ran my first half marathon in 2:29 and some seconds! I was a half marathoner! I cried when I crossed that finish line, I really did. I would never have pictured the girl who thought she was going to die on the treadmill after 30 seconds the year before would have turned into a runner!

How did I follow that first half marathon up?

I did a Tough Mudder:

And I ran another half marathon:

July 2014 started full fledged Dopey training. Running 5 days a week, Tuesday, and Thursday - Sunday. Tuesdays and Thursdays I did 3 miles. Fridays I did 5 miles. Saturdays I started at 5 miles, and every week added on a mile until I got to 10 miles, and kept doing 10 miles every Saturday after that. Sundays I started with 5 miles, and I would add on a mile every week until I hit 20 miles. Once I hit 20, my plan was to back it down to 16 miles on Sunday, and build back up to 20 again.

During training, I ran another half marathon:

And another:

And yes, one more:

Somewhere along the way of training for Dopey, I became a runner. A full fledged, crazy runner. I became a person who fell in love with running. Like really fell in love with it. As much as it is hard work, and it can hurt, and suddenly you have aches and pains you may not have had before, there is something so satisfying about running miles you never had before. There is something so soothing about just you, your music, and the open road. Nothing beats doing something people thought you couldn't do.

How did I fair during Dopey? Did I cross the finish line? You'll just have to wait and see!