My trainer must have figured out he’s on trainer probation as we inch up to my trainer-package renewal date because he’s finally started treating me like the dirty little punching bag I am. He has now kicked my butt into a beaten, whimpering pulp three sessions in a row. And now that it appears he’s finally gotten over the fear of breaking me, I think that when these current sessions end I’m gonna crawl back for 36 more. I just need to sell a kidney to pay for them first. Which might totally take me down a waist size in my jeans!
In the mean time! Marathon training officially starts tomorrow. Which means pretty soon I’ll have to stop doing leg workouts. Which I hope means we’ll just hit my chest even harder each week. And then maybe I can finally be a teen supermodel.
After running two Chicago Marathons on my own and three under the auspices of the AIDS Marathon training program, I’m trying something new this year. Four friends and I decided we like the structure and the camaraderie that come with a team training program, but we don’t get much out of the AIDS Marathon’s run-walk-run training philosophy. Or its rah-rah pep meetings. Or its stand-around-for-45-minutes-before-we-run training schedule. Or its nobody-looks-good-in-yellow yellow marathon tank tops. So we’re starting our own training team. And we each invited a handful of friends to join us. Our current head count is 17 people, but I get the feeling we’ll lose some of them before the month is out. So we should end up with a good 10ish dedicated runners who can push each other all summer. And I’m so excited about it I could just … well, run.
When we organized our team, we had three simple rules: 1) You have to be fun. Because nobody wants to be stuck on a 20-mile run with boring people. 2) You have to be dedicated to beating a 4:00 marathon goal. I’m tired of being in the 4:00+ crowd every year, and I’m hoping our no-walk training program plus our collective marathon experience will propel all of us into the rarefied world of 3:00-something finishing times. 3) You have to go to brunch after our runs. Or else you will be talked about. And nobody wants that.
In the mean time, we have to pick a team name and maybe make team shirts so people think we’re a legitimate training group. I’m currently at a loss for ideas, but fortunately we’re not too proud to take suggestions from faithful (or even not-so-faithful) blog readers. Matthew and his camera are currently on vacation in Peru (some people are so lazy they’ll do anything to get out of a three-mile run), so I’ll be doing the Joe Photo duties tomorrow. Look for our first (mostly) team photo on here before the weekend is out. Then brace yourself for another summer of marathon posts. This time with no begging for sponsorships!
But you’re not totally off the hook! If you want to sponsor an AIDS Marathon runner, I’ll be posting links to my friends who are running in the program this year just as soon as they set up their sponsorship pages.
And if you want to run the Chicago Marathon yourself, click here. But do it soon—the race is filling up fast!
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