Know fun

Something that's been quite a development for me in 2013, is running. After I had mono, I couldn't work out for 8 months without spleen pain. It was obnoxious. If anything, I'd have to keep any physical activity to a very low minimum.

Come May, I was feeling zero pain, and true to my obsessive self, I wanted a goal.

But not just any goal, my friends.

My best friend, Bi, and I have called working out "training" for a number of years. Why? Well, we had goals, but they never really ever worked out.

But this year. This would be the year. We decided to train for a half marathon. We didn't know if we'd really be able to do it, so we didn't register right away. But then we did. We were actually doing well with our training schedule, and we decided to go for it.

The difference between our first few "long runs" in May to now... unbelievable.

We were dying after a 33 minute run in MAY.

So, our Half is in a few weeks! September 29th, in Ocean City, NJ. We're so pumped. And also not scared... because....

We're training for a marathon now.

We're up to 16 miles with a great pace, and zero injuries. Tiny ones, but nothing that could stop us.

Allow me to share with you our experience running our first 16 miler.

We left around 9:30am on Labor Day. We figured we'd be somewhere around 3 hours for the whole run. We had 3 energy gels tucked into sports bras (Bad idea. Lesson learned.), and our water bottles filled. We started a trend of walking every so often to lessen the constant impact of the pavement for hours. It was going well.

The clouds promised rain, but the forecast said it shouldn't come just yet. Nonetheless, after five miles, we started to feel some sprinkling. We had just made it to my sisters apartment (my old one by my grandma's) to refill our water bottles. We decided, "let's just run in the rain!"

No, this was TORRENTIAL. We could hardly see in front of us. The rain drops were like icy bullets, soaking us layers deep.

Thunder pounded like a child dropping all the cookie sheets in the kitchen. Our new running shoes were housing mini oceans. Our headbands were doing a poor job keeping our faces dry.

Lightening. Yeah, we could see it now. It was that dark.

We thought about stopping a few times, but decided we'd run to my parent's, only a few miles away. We got there, and it was still buckets of rain. We were drenched to the point where we would have taken hours to completely dry even if we were inside.

I called Caleb, who was about to drive around to find us. He had our route from Map My Run, and was about to head out for us. Bi and I were distressed to say the least. We felt great. We were dying to keep running. The psychological adrenaline that empowers a runner after days of premeditation is not something easily dismissed.

Caleb was unsure, understandably. It was a mess outside. He gave us his blessing if it were to calm down out there.

Bi and I stood in the doorway of my parents dripping wet, and we decided we'd wait ten minutes to see if the thundering and lightening stopped. It did. We left.

We completed the next seven miles of our 16 mile run.

We ran in the rain the entire rest of the way, even if it was just sprinkling. We gained so much perspective after learning the troubles of running in a thunder storm... we feel like we can officially call ourselves, "runners," since we put up such a fight to accomplish our goal.

Bi gave me a little gift to celebrate our 16 miler. It was a shirt that said, "Know sweat, know fun." Indeed, my little bumble Bi. Indeed.

And so, we aim for an 18 miler in 2 weeks. We'll see how it goes... ;)