Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Why, Oh Why, Another Marathon?

Monday

I was in Heber hanging out with my sister, but I still managed to do a little run around my old stomping grounds. I just had a 30 minute tempo run scheduled, so I ran my usual 3-mile loop around Charleston, and added a little bit to make it 30 minutes. Man, having to add that little bit was so cool! :) I hit 30 minutes right when I got to my house, and I had done 3.33 miles! I went in and changed into Pete's Newtons (I still haven't bought my own...) and went back out for 10 more minutes. In fact, I was feeling so good, I did 12 minutes. No pain. Sweet! Next time I'll try 20 minutes again. :)

Tuesday

That was yesterday, right? This week is feeling so weird with the long weekend! We came home yesterday, and when Pete got home from work he took Mindy and Ethan snowboarding. They were so excited too! Having it be just me and Elle in the evening made it really easy to get her to bed by 7:00! It was so nice! I had plenty of time to get a trainer ride in, wahoo! I found a documentary called Ballerina about what it takes to be a prima ballerina in Russia. It was really interesting, and watching those girls push themselves and practically work themselves into the ground helped me push hard too. When I got to the 40:00 mark, I wanted to up the resistance, but it was already on the hardest it would go! So I just pushed harder for the last 10 minutes before cooling down.

Just the other day I was telling Pete that I never get sore after a bike ride anymore, and that maybe meant I wasn't pushing myself hard enough. Well, I guess I pushed myself hard enough last night because my legs and hips are sore today! I even stretched really well afterwards.

Pete got home with the sleeping kids just as I finished. He said they did a really good job and that Mindy is a natural. Maybe a a snowboarder would be a better career choice for her than a ballerina...

Wednesday

Last night Mindy woke up crying with her ears hurting, and this morning she was feeling sick to her stomach so she didn't go to school, and I didn't go to the gym. I stayed home and played nurse. I did get to go on a little walk to the store for juice, though. She seems to be feeling better now, but her ears are still plugged. Hopefully she'll be better tomorrow, poor girl.

My sister, Katie, called me today and asked if I could send her the marathon training plan I made for us. As soon as Pete got home with the computer, I sent it on over. We start on Monday with our 16-week plan. It's a really simple plan that I adapted from the one on runnersworld.com, only having us run 3 or 4 days a week. I didn't want to get burnt out on running, and I still want to have time to keep up on swimming and biking even though they won't be as much in focus until after the marathon. That being said, I am doing the St. George Tri at the end of week 12. It will just be for fun, but I'll have to do a little rearranging with my 12-mile run scheduled for that day.

So, Why?

The big question of the day, though, is WHY am I doing another marathon? Seriously, after St. George, I had no desire whatsoever to do another marathon (except for at the end of an Ironman, but that's so much more fun!), and I really didn't plan on doing one this year until I heard about Operation Jack.

There's this guy named Sam, who has a little boy, named Jack, who's autistic. Sam wanted to do something for his little boy, and for all the other people who are affected by autism. I actually can't say that I'm really affected by autism myself, but there was just something about his mission that pulled me in, and I wanted to be a part of it. Sam is doing 60 marathons this year to raise awareness and money for Train 4 Autism and he's calling it Operation Jack. He's already done 9, and when I say done, I mean really done! He gets down on himself if he's over like 3:15! I can't even imagine running one marathon that fast, let alone 60! Here's his schedule.

Still, though, I was only thinking, "If I do a marathon this year, I want to do one with him." If. Well, at some point I was talking to my sister and my sister-in-law and they both decided they wanted to try to do a marathon this year. Of course, I was like, "Well, if you want to do one, I'll do it with you!" (I've got to quit saying stuff like this, it gets me into trouble!) They also liked the idea of doing a marathon with Operation Jack so that narrowed it down to the marathons he's doing in Utah: Park City or Utah Valley. We liked the idea of Park City because it's at the end of summer, but it's also right before the Bear Lake Half Ironman that I wanted to do so we decided on Utah Valley. I'm actually really excited to do this one now, it's going to be so beautiful running through Provo Canyon in June, and a lot of it is downhill! Plus I'll get it over with pretty early in the season and be able to shift focus to triathlon for the rest of the summer. Hopefully I'll be a faster runner after all this too!

Now it's time for me to ask for your help. :) Again. Here I am, always trying to raise money for something, hu? Well, I just need to get 10 people to donate $10 to Operation Jack. Click here to be one of those people and donate 10 bucks! Then I think I get a t-shirt? I'm not sure, either way you'll be awesome for doing it!

Or do you want to run this marathon (or 1/2 marathon or 5k) with me and try to raise money yourself? That would be so fun if you wanted to do it with us, the more the merrier! Click here to join our team. (It's being really slow for me right now so you might have to wait a while.)

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