Friday, September 10, 2010

To Run, Perchance to Dream

(That is not me, by the way.)

Way back in May, on my birthday, I started on a Life List of 100 Goals. I got to 16. Pretty ambitious, we are. 

One of the goals was to run a 5K this year, specifically to do Race for the Cure in honor of my sister. I have never run a 5K. I'm not a distance runner by any stretch of the imagination. 

An acquaintance told me, a few weeks ago, about how she trained for marathons with Austin Fit, a very supportive and relatively inexpensive training group that meets (egads!) at 7:00 on Saturday mornings downtown. 

Their website informed me that training would begin in two weeks. It felt like the brass ring I needed to grab. I needed to challenge myself to do something I hadn't ever thought possible. And I needed it to have nothing whatsoever to do with my kids, because I needed to have control over the effort-outcome equation and see reliable, visible results. :-) 

So now I'm training for the Live Strong half-marathon which takes place in February. It still seems nuts to me. As I said, I'm not a distance runner. I told my brother and sister about it on the first day and it took me three days to peel them off the floor with a spatula. Also, when it's still dark on a Saturday morning and I'm awake and driving downtown, I think What, for the love of all things holy, have I gotten myself into? Every. Single. Week. 

But then I get there and the folks are friendly and supportive, and I've found a running buddy in my pace group, and there are other crazy folks running in hordes around Lady Bird Lake, and the lake glimmers with early morning promise and possibility. 



And then it doesn't feel quite so crazy anymore. It just feels good.

5 comments:

KTG said...

Please post updates about your training along the way.I'm wondering what's involved would love to do this someday.

Tim said...

And she gets up three times a week at O'dark-thirty to go running before I have to leave (usually by 7). I am super-proud of the way Hannah has pursued this goal. BTW, her last group run was 2.9 miles, which is very close (4.6 km) to the original 5K goal. Rock on, Hannah!
-"The Professor"

Jenny said...

I'm so impressed!!

Tamara said...

Way to go, Hannah! And I love how you wrote about it.

Kristen said...

I'm not sure if I was one of the ones who got peeled off the floor with a spatula, but I am certainly proud of you! And looking forward to joining you tomorrow for a run. If you can just keep my husband inspired, I will be even MORE proud of you ;-)