The Running Club

So in an attempt to keep me running over the winter time I joined the Arlington Road Runners Club. Basically every Saturday at 9am, regardless of weather and hangover state, I'm supposed to meet these guys at Rosslyn and run. There were two options for running: the Half-Marathon training or the Fitness training. Since the Half-Marathon training makes me run 4 miles on my second week (woah! The most I've ever run was 3 miles -- don't increase it by at third like that!), I joined the Fitness training.

So the fitness one is more doable, even if only psychologically... Basically we start at running 30 minutes (I can do that!), then increase 5 minutes every week. Easy enough, right? If I can run 30 minutes, I can certainly run 35 (even if I might be wanting to kill someone -- or feel like I'm going to die myself -- by the end of 35 minutes). And it keeps on going like that until we're running 2 hours. 2 long hours at a time.

2 hours? Basically by the time we get into spring I can be running a 10-miler (maybe more?)! Just in time for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler! Will I dare sign up and make it official?

I go from being excited about it (can't wait to see how my legs will tone up until then!) to being doubtful of myself. Can I really do this? Can I really run for 2 hours straight one day without having to take walk breaks? There are days I'm all pumped up and ready -- "bring it on!!" -- other days I think I'll fail at it. Even though I'm not usually a failure when it comes to sports (comes with the territory when you grow up with an athletic family), but running is still a new environment, makes me doubt myself, makes me fear that I'll quit. That I won't be able to keep up with it. What am I thinking? I'm not a runner I always hated to run, I play other sports, I can bike, I can swim... Why did I decide to pick up running?

It doesn't help that I'm slooooow. Crap, my running pace is almost the same as my New Yorker walking pace!! I'm now at 12-12:30/minute mile. Meaning that if I did a 5k today, I would end up finishing it in about 37.5 minutes. The 9/11 5k I ran back in September? The one I couldn't run the whole thing and walked for about a mile? I finished it in 39 minutes, not much different from my only-running-no-walking time. How sad is that my running is tortoise-pace? And it still kicks the crap out of me!

By the way, for you guys out there hoping to meet women -- the women outnumber the men 5 to 1 on this running group... And I thought it'd be a good way for me to meet guys...

Anyone out there wants to join the group too? This is the third week, sign up is still open until the beginning of December. I need all the motivation I can get to go out on those freezing winter mornings after a night out (got home at 3am this past Friday night...) and run. Knowing that I'm not the only idiot out there certainly helps when the alarm rings on Saturday morning and you think "what the hell was I thinking?"