This Princess Wears Running Shoes

It started* last summer with an email to my sister

Subject line: a completely ridiculous question
Email text:
Disney hosts several races throughout the year.   I missed the deadline on the one in November. Boo.

Ridiculous question: would you be interested in running a half marathon?   I am not fast AT ALL and am not even sure if I could run 13 miles, but a Disney race seems the kindest way to start, or try it.   If you would want to try  a race, I would be your buddy.  I am not 100% sure I will sign up but I have been thinking about it.   And you could keep me motivated and make comments, etc. whilst racing

Al wrote back rather quickly:

I actually would consider doing the half. Do you know the date and registration fee?   If we decide to do it, you are in charge of coordinating training plans. Aka tell me what to do each week. I need to buy new shoes, which I am planning on doing as soon as I receive my gym rebate from my insurance. How thoughtful. And Central Park is good for running. I have yet to run outdoors in NYC, but autumn is prob not the worst time to start....

Time to put our money where our mouth was.   I signed us up as a 2-person team so we are guaranteed the same starting corral group, and we were locked in.   We gave ourselves more than 5 months to train, which is oodles of time, really, especially for someone who runs occasionally.  Throughout the 5-month time period, we have been in touch via chat and text and email.

I downloaded the 22 week plan for "running for a time" even though I don't have a firm time goal. "Finishing in the upright position" just suggests some chuggly couch potato, which I am not. I think of myself as an intermediate runner.

It has been lovely, and fun to track our progress.   Because I will forever be entertained by my sister and do not want to forget this training period, (and might need motivation for a future race!) I will be including fun texts and thoughts on the blog over the next 2 weeks.  

*Well I guess technically speaking it started a long time ago when I started to run for exercise regularly and realized if I could run 5 miles each morning 'for fun' then maybe I should try it in some sort of organized fashion as well.  But thinking about it is different than inviting someone along for the ride!