February 1st 2011…Day 1…What was I thinking?!

So…it’s official.  I’m training for a marathon.

Me.

The girl for whom walking is what you do to get to the car.  The girl who cannot run to the end of the road without collapsing in a heap of hyperventilation.  The girl for whom a major cardio workout involves a large number of shoe retail outlets and a high credit card limit.

If you know me at all you’re probably falling into one of three categories about now:

1. Staring in disbelief at the screen and wondering when did the earth flip on it’s axis.
2. Saying “Yeah Right” or a variation with much more colourful language.
3. Having to pick yourself up off the floor and check for injuries following a burst of spontaneous hysterics.

Well, I can’t blame you.  If you’d told me a year ago (scratch that, if you’d told me a few months back) that I would be training for a marathon, I’d have laughed uncontrollably and bought you a one-way ticket to the funny farm.

But it is true.  It’s real.  And I am 100% committed to making this happen.

So here’s the story of how this minor lapse in sanity came about…

As most of you will know, in November I had a little solo jaunt over to the good old US of A for fun, major shoe shopping and firewalking (not necessarily in that order!)  During my time in the US I made some fantastic friends, some of whom I know will be friends for life (shout outs to Joe, Christina, Victor, Lola…the list goes on!)

What I didn’t know is how drastically some of these people would affect my life.

On my return from the US, I kept in touch with everyone through the magic of Facebook and I noticed that one particular lady, the gorgeous Christina, whom I’d had a special connection with in NYC (an absolute firecracker with a constant smile on her face!) had mentions of health and medical insurance.

I didn’t read anything into it at the time and assumed it was your usual day to day Facebook chat, until I saw a post which stopped me in my tracks and made me pay attention.  January 5th this year – “JUST GOT THE CALL. IT’S GO TIME. PLEASE SEND PRAYERS.  I’M GOING IN SWINGING!!!! TALLY-HOOOOO!!!!!”, this was the point at which I discovered that this lovely person that I had met only a few months before had a rare form of cancer and was going in for surgery.   Reality check time.

I’m not going to rave too much about her here (I could go on and on about her spirit, energy, positivity and amazing attitude in the face of adversity…) but I will say that reading her blog and interacting with her, even from the other side of the world – I have been truly inspired.

For anyone who wants to know more and are interested in seeing what real courage and a true positive outlook on life is about, feel free to check out her site here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/foxfire

Anyway…back to the story.  In a Facebook exchange where I invited her over to my side of the pond, Christina mentioned that she would aim to do her next marathon run over here when she was back to health, and asked whether I could be persuaded to join.

The below was the sequence of thoughts that followed:

• Thought 1) I’ve never run any sort of distance (sales shopping doesn’t count).
• Thought 2) I can’t even run to the end of the road without getting wheezy…I don’t think I could do it.
• Thought 3) Christina has a collapsed lung and is still up for this…what the hell are you whining about woman?! You have no excuse at all!!
• Thought 4) This would be an amazing accomplishment (Am I really considering this…?)
• Thought 5) Let’s do it! (Yeah baby!)

So here we are.

I’ll be documenting my journey on this blog…and there’s even a little tracker over there somewhere ——-> which shows you how far I’ve run and how long I’ve trained so that we can see my progress as time goes on.

The aim is to for us both to train up (when the docs allow her back in her running shoes that is!) and then set a date for later this year.  Whatever happens the goal is to have completed the marathon before 2011 is out.

So that’s it folks…The journey of 1000 steps start here….I hope you’re ready for the ride…I know I am!

x