To marathon or not to marathon?

Lately I have been toying around with the idea of upping my goal from doing a half marathon to doing a full marathon. Let me be clear, here, that it is not any regular marathon- it would specifically be the Wald Disney World Marathon, because seriously, that would be the only place I would willingly run 26.2 miles through. This year is the 20th anniversary of the WDW marathon, so it’s a slightly different course and has some “special surprises” which since this is Disney, will either be awesome of super lame; they really have no middle ground when it comes to surprises. They either blow it out of the water or screw it up entirely. I have spent days thinking about it, imagining myself crossing the finish line and getting my Mickey medal and the incredible feeling of pride that will come with that. But then I started imagining the training. The problem is I am a sloooooooow runner, so running 26 miles will take me between six and seven hours. And I have four small children and a husband who works crazy hours and goes to school full time while he works on his Masters degree, so there isn’t a whole lot of opportunities to take virtually the whole day off to jog around the neighborhood. It might be different if my kids were old enough to be able to watch themselves, or if I had ANY family in the area who could help out watching the kids, it would be a different matter. Right now I wake up when DH and all the kids are still asleep and get my long run in before everyone wakes up. If I wake up at 6 I can still get 13 miles in and be home by 9. It’s not a huge sacrifice for me sleep-wise. But for marathon training, any run that is 15 miles or longer would be more than 4 hours, and there would be a lot of weeks of those. Regrettably, I don’t think a full marathon is going to be something I can do until all the kids are in school- I can train during the day when they are gone. And by the point, Isobel will be 12 (!) and old enough to baby sit the sibs. I feel like I’m letting myself down a little, because once I got it in my brain that this is something I could accomplish, I feel bad that there will be no follow through or testing the theory. But it’s not NEVER, it’s just not NOW.

Every mile is magic?

Ok, so after this blog has remained dormant for *cough cough* years, I am reviving it as an online journal as I train for a half marathon. I am a stay at home 32 year old mother of 4 (DD7, DD6, DS2 and DS16months). I am a Navy veteran, but have been out since 2006. I would love to lose 60 pounds to get back to my post-kids weight, but realistically would be pleased with losing 40. I am currently following the Jeff Galloway training program for beginning runners (found here: http://as1.wdpromedia.com/media/ewwos/pdf/rundisney/training-programs/WnD12beg.pdf) I am six weeks into the training. When I started I was smart in saying that I was only going to work on the distance and then work on running faster, but of course, I did not do that. I have been going further and running faster each and every week. The problem is that I am overweight and my body is not used to carrying this much weight over this long a distance this quickly. The pain in my knees has been, well, intense to say the least. At its worst it was bad enough to keep me awake at night. I took the last week easy and the pain has (mostly) subsided so for my first run this week (tomorrow) I will be easing up on the speed quite a bit. And, yes, I do realize the irony in this- I started running to lose weight, but now I’m realizing I’m going to need to lose weight to be able to run! Even when I was in the Navy, running was torture. I hated every mile of those forced “fun” group runs. Yet here I am, willingly running. My life has reached the point where I am glad to get the chance to get out of the house and be alone with my thoughts and the relief that comes from FINALLY doing something good for myself. When I started this more than a month ago my goal was to be able to run Disney’s Wine and Dine Half Marathon in November. Because running has to be more fun at WDW- everything else is! Plus, I love that place. I would walk through hot coals to be able to go there, so comparatively, running 13.1 miles is easy, right? Unfortunately that plan has hit the rather regrettable snag of my husband doesn’t want to pay for (another) vacation to Disney World. So I am going to have to dig down and find the real motivation to keep going. Hence the blog. It serves as my journal as well as a public declaration of my intentions. Whenever I start to diet or work out, I keep quiet about it so when I inevitably fail, no one knows. Not this time. Join me for my journey, because I am in it for the long run :)