Heyyo! Glad to pop back in here and let you guys know how my first week of training went!
It was an absolutely beautiful week to get outside and start running (along with a LOT of walking ;))! It was in the high 60s low 70s all week and there was an amazing breeze, so I really was happy to get outside and soak up some vitamin D. Plus, it was a great excuse to do a little exploring!
I moved to Winston-Salem, NC last June (wow, it's almost been a year-crazy how time flies) and started school at Wake Forest School of Medicine getting my masters in Physician Assistant studies. I was raised in NC, not too far down the road from WS, but besides several school trips to Old Salem (totally recommend making a trip here and enjoying Old Salem and especially the Moravian cookies, yummy!) and touring Wake Forest for college, I never really "hung out" up here. Embarrassingly enough, since I've lived here almost a year, I haven't really gotten to know the little city outside of my daily routines. Running/walking has been a great way to look around a little bit and take in this cute town. There are so many parks around, sidewalks everywhere which I love, and cute little shops selling this and that so close to where I live. I absolutely love it here. It's a great scene for a new, young family, obviously for students, and the older generation who want to settle somewhere with a moderate climate and just enough to do for all those in between.
Okay, anyways back to running. This week was great, I could hardly hold myself back from just jumping into running, but I really want to take this seriously and not burn myself out before I really get back into shape, so I've been sticking to my schedules--probably more diligently (so far) than I've ever behaved in my life. I'm a very go-with-the-flow kind of person who is very willing to adapt or even completely abandon a plan if necessary. So I stuck to my plan and it was great--lots of walking and medium amounts of running. It's amazing how quickly you can get out of "running shape" when you don't do it regularly. I've always been a sporadic kind of runner.
I was talking to my best friend Cody the other day, who has a blog that you should check out: OneHungryRunner. She's a wonderful writer and is always including delicious and easy food to make. Anyways, she was like, "you're training for a marathon!?" (She knows how unattached to running i've always been, we've been friends since we were 2!) As I mentioned before about my go with the flow, hippyish personality, I'm much more into exercise that gets you into shape, but is simultaneously relaxing--herein lies my absolute love for Yoga. I also love to ride bikes, takes me back to my childhood of summer vacations at the beach, renting bikes and riding them all over the beach and Hilton Head Island. I've always been more excited to go to the gym for a spin class or to jump on the stationary bike or head to yoga classes then lace up my shoes and hit the pavement. Cody is a ridiculous runner. She can run for miles and do it really fast. She played field hockey in high school and used to run sub-6 minute miles--whattttt?? I ran with her ONCE in college and she was running circles around me, literally. Never did that again. She's also run several marathons already at the ripe old age of 25! So obviously when she heard about my new plan to run 26.2 miles, she wanted to check in with me to get the scoop, making sure I had realistic goals and give me some awesome tips and tricks, and of course to yell, "WOOO YES! I KNEW I'D GET YOU--WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD OF RUNNING!" We've always been each others cheerleaders and within 5 minutes of talking to her about why I really wanted to do this, she was jumping right in and offering to run any and all races with me and help me train, even though she lives in SC.
I know it's people like her, that are going to get me through the really tough and long road ahead, but I'm still so excited about it! The more I talk about it with people, the more passionate I feel about accomplishing this huge goal. Even though none of the people who were at the Boston Marathon and were injured or just absolutely freaked out will probably ever know who I am or what I'm doing, it doesn't matter. Maybe why I'm running this will never grab the attention of anyone important or start a movement, but again-it doesn't matter. It's already changing my life and sometimes it only takes one person to make a difference.
Stay tuned!
Paige Marie
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
What am I doing?
So. I think I've tried to start a blog a few times and it's been the same story with each entry. I'm really excited about it for the first day and then I never post again. Just like when I was a little girl and had...how-many-ever-diaries and maybe wrote in the first page of each diary. Yikes.
I decided to start this blog because I really need support and who better to get support from then a bunch of people you don't know hanging out there somewhere in cyberland. I'm not a fabulous writer, I'll probably make a million and one grammatical errors and I probably won't be very funny. But maybe that will interest some of you out there. Who knows.
This is why I need support. I've decided to train for a marathon (holy crap).
I woke up the day after the horrific events of the Boston Marathon bombings and felt inspired. Well, actually I felt really pissed off and thought, "WTF. This is complete bullshit! All those innocent people who were out there not for fame or fortune or any other reason than to accomplish something for themselves or even in some cases for their children who are paralyzed (I saw one guy who is an older gentleman who pushes his son the whole way so that they can "run" together--amazing) or for a friend who is fighting cancer, etc. These people are just running. For fun, no less!" What also pissed me off is that the bombs weren't in the middle of the course, but among the thousands and thousands of people who go out to support these people as they run. They stand there for 2 (for the fast people), 3, 4, 5, or even 6 hours! However long it takes every last person to cross that finish line. They cheer for people they've never met and will probably never have the chance to meet as they take on the long, difficult task of running 26.2 miles straight--just to do it--to maybe get a medal at the end. These people are amazing .
My mother is an amazing runner! She has been running since she was about 23 years old and has done a few marathons, several half-marathons, even more 10Ks and 5Ks. Last year, she participated in her first ever IronMan up in Mont Tremblant, Canada. All she wanted to do was finish it, and she did! When I woke up on April 16, I was thinking about her. How devastated I would have been if she had gone through all of that training, the injuries, the milestones accomplished, the sweat, tears, and everything in between for some person-not even worthy of our concern-to do something so senseless and keep her from reaching her goal of finishing. Even worse, to possibly injure her or my father who was waiting for her all day--15 hours!!--for her to cross that finish line.
So I'm running for some freakin solidarity. For all those people who were running that day and for those who were just supporting. Because I REFUSE to be scared to go outside of my house and RUN for crying-out-loud!!!! I refuse to allow this incident to scare me from doing anything. I refuse to allow this act of terrorism keep me from being free. Maybe this doesn't make sense to anyone else, and maybe it does. Regardless, I'm training for a marathon and I need help!
I have never ever ever ever wanted to run a marathon. I've never had the desire to run anything longer than 3 miles. Honestly, I never had the desire to run 3 miles, but I thought, "Hey. It's kinda healthy. My mom runs all the time. So does Andrew (one of my 4 brothers). I guess I should get my act together." In the last several months I have not been running (oops!), so this training is going to be like "start[ing] from the very beginning" as Julie Andrews so eloquently sang it.
Yesterday was "Day 1," I walked for 15 min, ran for 10, and walked for 15 min more. I'm blending 2 training schedule's that I found here (the 26-week schedule) and here. I'm a littler farther ahead of the first link I posted, but not quite ready for the second link, so for the first 2-3 weeks I'm going to be going with what I did yesterday, except adding a little more running and a little less walking every other training day. So today is a rest day, but I'm going to go out for a 30 minute walk just for good measure. Once I get past these first 3 weeks, I'm signing up for a 5K as my first "mile marker" in my training program--I'm looking for something in July or August. Then, I'll find a 10K, then half, and then a marathon!
I would love any and all advice and any and all prayers! I know this is going to be a long, tough road, but I'm really excited about it! Stay tuned--I'll try to keep up with this blog thing and let you know how it's going!
PaigeMarie
I decided to start this blog because I really need support and who better to get support from then a bunch of people you don't know hanging out there somewhere in cyberland. I'm not a fabulous writer, I'll probably make a million and one grammatical errors and I probably won't be very funny. But maybe that will interest some of you out there. Who knows.
This is why I need support. I've decided to train for a marathon (holy crap).
I woke up the day after the horrific events of the Boston Marathon bombings and felt inspired. Well, actually I felt really pissed off and thought, "WTF. This is complete bullshit! All those innocent people who were out there not for fame or fortune or any other reason than to accomplish something for themselves or even in some cases for their children who are paralyzed (I saw one guy who is an older gentleman who pushes his son the whole way so that they can "run" together--amazing) or for a friend who is fighting cancer, etc. These people are just running. For fun, no less!" What also pissed me off is that the bombs weren't in the middle of the course, but among the thousands and thousands of people who go out to support these people as they run. They stand there for 2 (for the fast people), 3, 4, 5, or even 6 hours! However long it takes every last person to cross that finish line. They cheer for people they've never met and will probably never have the chance to meet as they take on the long, difficult task of running 26.2 miles straight--just to do it--to maybe get a medal at the end. These people are amazing .
My mother is an amazing runner! She has been running since she was about 23 years old and has done a few marathons, several half-marathons, even more 10Ks and 5Ks. Last year, she participated in her first ever IronMan up in Mont Tremblant, Canada. All she wanted to do was finish it, and she did! When I woke up on April 16, I was thinking about her. How devastated I would have been if she had gone through all of that training, the injuries, the milestones accomplished, the sweat, tears, and everything in between for some person-not even worthy of our concern-to do something so senseless and keep her from reaching her goal of finishing. Even worse, to possibly injure her or my father who was waiting for her all day--15 hours!!--for her to cross that finish line.
So I'm running for some freakin solidarity. For all those people who were running that day and for those who were just supporting. Because I REFUSE to be scared to go outside of my house and RUN for crying-out-loud!!!! I refuse to allow this incident to scare me from doing anything. I refuse to allow this act of terrorism keep me from being free. Maybe this doesn't make sense to anyone else, and maybe it does. Regardless, I'm training for a marathon and I need help!
I have never ever ever ever wanted to run a marathon. I've never had the desire to run anything longer than 3 miles. Honestly, I never had the desire to run 3 miles, but I thought, "Hey. It's kinda healthy. My mom runs all the time. So does Andrew (one of my 4 brothers). I guess I should get my act together." In the last several months I have not been running (oops!), so this training is going to be like "start[ing] from the very beginning" as Julie Andrews so eloquently sang it.
Yesterday was "Day 1," I walked for 15 min, ran for 10, and walked for 15 min more. I'm blending 2 training schedule's that I found here (the 26-week schedule) and here. I'm a littler farther ahead of the first link I posted, but not quite ready for the second link, so for the first 2-3 weeks I'm going to be going with what I did yesterday, except adding a little more running and a little less walking every other training day. So today is a rest day, but I'm going to go out for a 30 minute walk just for good measure. Once I get past these first 3 weeks, I'm signing up for a 5K as my first "mile marker" in my training program--I'm looking for something in July or August. Then, I'll find a 10K, then half, and then a marathon!
I would love any and all advice and any and all prayers! I know this is going to be a long, tough road, but I'm really excited about it! Stay tuned--I'll try to keep up with this blog thing and let you know how it's going!
PaigeMarie
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