run 5, walk 2, repeat

How do you spell slacker?

M-A-R-G-O

Yep that's me, big time slacker here. The OCK Memorial Marathon is quickly approaching. Quickly as in less than a week. This Sunday. A mere 6 days away.

Have I been training? Um, no. Do I have a good excuse, or even any excuse at all? Um, no. I really don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't seem to get it together. Last January I joined Weight Watchers and committed to it and lost 20 pounds. That's also the point where we decided we'd run the half marathon and I knew I couldn't just go out and run 13.1 miles without training so I trained. I ran every Tuesday and Thursday and on Sunday's I did a long run, working my way up to 12 miles so that I would be strong and ready for the big run.

This January, after regaining those 20 pounds plus 5 extra (I'm a human yo-yo, I swear) I decided to get back on track with my Weight Watcher's program and I even mentioned how I was going to stay motivated by scheduling several runs throughout the year so I would keep training. A lot of good that's done me!

Hubby and I have both just not been training at all like we should be. We both keep saying that we'll do the run on the 27th but I'm not sure how we're going to manage just walking out there and running that distance without just dying. So on Saturday he told me he thought that we should probably do at least 8 miles this weekend just to see where we stand. If we made it through we could go ahead and do the 13.1, if it killed us we should just count that money as lost and aim for the next run in June. As nice as it would be to just back out of next weeks run though I know that I'll never get back into training if I don't just dive in. I don't want to be sitting here the week before our June run and still not have trained at all.

So yesterday, despite both of us fighting some nasty cold/allergy thing, we set off on our 8 mile run. The first 4 miles went ok. Miles 5 and 6 were exhausting. Miles 7 and 8 were absolutely awful. And those last 2 miles were uphill, which made it doubly worse. It stunk, it really did. But I did it, all 8 miles, and afterward although I felt like I wanted to die I was proud of what I'd accomplished.

So I'll be there on Sunday with bells on and I'll do my run 5 minutes/walk 2 minutes until I reach 13.1 miles and I'll get that finishers medal and t-shirt and hopefully that will be what I need to keep on running.