Running Post #1

This week I ran outside for the first time. I figured that it was time I get off the treadmill and experience the great outdoors on foot. I ran around my super cute neighborhood and it is totally cute-lots of family homes, awesome gardens full of blooming flowers, beautiful tall trees everywhere and very few cars and pedestrians. I never thought that I would be running outside but thanks to my bright idea to run a half marathon in September I gotta train. And when I say train, I mean that I got to bust my ass training for it. I am absolutely terrified of running and the idea of this marathon scares the crap out of me which is why I know it's something that I should do. They say you should do something everyday that scares you, well, this is my thing for the year.

Now I am totally pissed because I recently discovered that I must have pulled a muscle or something in my right calf because after about 5 minutes of running, I get this horrible intense pain. It's actually been happening for a long time but since I am running often now, I am more aware of it. Actually, I felt this same pain two years ago when I walked the 60 mile Breast Cancer Walk. However, at the time I thought it was just because that was a ton of walking on one weekend. Yet, here we are, almost two full years later and I still have this awful pain in my right calf. Well, everyone told me that there were going to setbacks with marathon training, I guess this is my first setback. I hope this is my first and only setback, even though I am sure I have several blisters and broken toenails to look forward to... : (

So obviously yesterday's and today's runs were not long at all due to this pain. In fact, sadly, I couldn't even quite run a mile, I do know that I will get better at this. I will get better at running and I'll figure out how to stop this calf muscle from hurting. I'm even keeping track of my progress on my very own excel spreadsheet. Yep, I'm a dork! But I think that it will help motivate me to run more every time.

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start." -John Bingham, running speaker and writer