Oh Everest, My Everest

I have somehow run 10 races this year, including 2 FULL MARATHONS and 3 halves, and my annual total at the end of the 11th month is 347 miles. 347! No wonder running has felt so sucky this year. I only do enough of it to be able to keep doing it, but not for it to be enjoyable or for me to improve very much. If I started doing 20 miles a week today until the end of the year, I would still not even clear 500 miles in 2008 and most runners who do as many races as I do usually cover double that. Sad, sad, sad.

Now that I have big plans to become a Marine in the next year, I had better get my act together. Running fast is already ten times the suck of nice, easy distance running so I need to do everything in my power to pump up the juice and quit sucking wind. You know, that VO2 max stuff. I’ll bone up during my holiday break and be like butter all over that bread when I get back to college and the Mid-Atlantic winter at the end of January. I just ordered Run Less Run Faster on Amazon for airplane reading.

My sister called on Thanksgiving and said that she has started running 1.5 miles on weekdays with her neighbors, one of whom is also a beginner and another a marathoner who is trying to get more people into it so she can have buddies to train with. This is probably the best news I have gotten all year. While I don’t get to be with my sisters more than the one or two times a year I come home for holiday family time, it is really nice to look forward to actually being able to do something like this together. In the past few winters, I have gone running with my brother-in-law and sometimes also one of my brothers, but the sisters were never runners. I mentioned several times that neither was I, but you know how that goes. People do things on their own time.

This news comes on the heels of my other sister (the one married to the runner) telling me that she has been training to run races like the Muddy Buddy with her husband. She is really impatient and stubborn (as in stubbornly refusing to stretch after workouts because she is not flexible… which makes her less flexible and want to stretch less…) and she runs too fast for a beginner so she feels like she is done after about a minute of running. About a month ago, I talked to her about my marathon training group (for probably the millionth time) and how beginners like me often use a run-walk program to get through the mileage and build endurance gradually. That time she listened and reported back a couple days later that it was a huge success. I hope she is still running, too.

Just think, my dream finally coming true. When your siblings are between a decade and two decades older than you, it is a big deal to be able to play with them. I am imagining running with not just a sister but BOTH my sisters this winter and the idea alone is almost enough to make up for all the times none of those grown-up bastards wanted to play Scrabble or Stratego with their kid sister. HAH! Finally.