Sunday, April 28, 2013

Week 1 Down!!

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

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