And So It Begins...

Today marked the first run of my official training for the 2014 Chevron Houston Marathon.  I am a little late on getting started and have chosen a pretty accelerated program for three reasons:

1. My general running plan loosely follows  a marathon training schedule anyway;

2. Mentally, I don't do well if training drags on too long. I'm pretty focused and dedicated to training, so if it goes on and on, I tend to get bogged down and unhappy. I find it's easy to lose sight of the goal if it's too far away; and

3. Honestly, I've been in such denial about the whole thing, I waited until just this week to actually do the countdown from the Marathon date. I was shocked to realize that I had to get started ASAP.  And as you can see I was super excited about it: 

You'll notice that it's dark out. That's not night dark. That, my friends, is morning dark. Nothing like a 5:30 a.m. wake up call on a Saturday morning to start training off with a bang.  I'm not a huge fan of running in the dark. Mostly because it's dark out!  I'm a big fraidy cat and running in the dark gives you a lot of time to freak yourself out (which, come to think of it, does wonders for speed!). It's also a little boring when everyone else is still tucked into their comfy beds. I was plenty jealous of those people today. 

But here it is, barely 9:00 a.m. And my first training run is officially behind me. Too many more ahead to think about. But, I'm excited about what's ahead of me and about setting and reaching new goals. 

First one down!