Atomic Wedgie

I'm joining the blogging world to update supporters on my 1/2 marathon training. Yes, 1/2 marathon - that is 13.1 miles. I've started training in the past, gotten up to 10 miles and then decided running was stupid and that I would much rather eat Chinese food. This time is a bit different. This time, I am running with a group called Team in Training and I'm running for a reason. I would like to do something to honor the lives of a friend and of my cousin whom we lost to leukemia. You can read all of the serious stuff on my Team in Training donor site (which you should visit and become a Titanium donor) http://www.active.com/donate/tntgla/tntglaJSohn Here is where I will be giving you the details of my training.

This Sunday is our first team practice. We received information from our coach regarding what we should be doing to prepare for our first meeting. First, they said "no cotton." You need to wear breathable materials... So, I went out and bought some polyester pants. Seriously, that is what they tell you to get. Second, they told us we should run for thirty minutes three times this week before we meet for practice on Sunday. Finally, they told us we can't listen to music while we run.

I woke up this morning. Ate a bowl of oatmeal, thinking that it would "stick to my ribs" and carry me through my jog. I waited the obligatory half hour before doing anything physical (I wonder if I will enforce this rule with the child...) put on my polyester pants and headed to the gym. The walk from the car to the gym was lovely in my new pants. I felt as though I was gliding with each slippery step - I hopped on my treadmill and programmed it for thirty minutes. I have to say that the no music while running long distances thing is stressing me out a bit, so I'm ignoring it for now and listening to music while I practice on my own. So, at this point the treadmill is programmed, Justin Timberlake is blasting (Eitan listens to JT too, and - he calls him "JT," AND - he programmed TiVo so we could watch his HBO special - I'm just saying) and I'm off. I should say that I've been running off and on for the past few months, so 30 minutes is not really a huge deal to me at this point. I think there was something about the slippery pants that made me feel like I could run faster, I took off at a much faster pace than usual. After about five minutes I realized there was another problem with the slippery pants, they were sort of creepy - if you know what I mean. Of course, I was on a treadmill and there was someone like 4 feet behind me watching as my pants crept and crept - watching and prohibiting a quick fix. After about 10 minutes I realized the oatmeal does not stick to your ribs so much. At least not the type that Eitan made, it seemed to want to leave my ribs quickly... I slowed down around 15 minutes in, feeling that something awful was going to happen (I could give descriptions, but I'm hoping for this blog to reach audiences of a broad range including my Nana and Dad, they don't need to know what I thought was going to happen, but you can guess...) 20 minutes in I hopped off and ran to my car in my slippery pants.

Not sure what to do about the "no cotton" rule. And I still have to run 3 times, 30 minutes each.