Let the Marathon Training Begin

Saturday marked the official beginning of Fall Marathon/Half-Marathon/Tulsa Run/5K training. I feel so honored to have been chosen to be a fellow run leader with Bobby Michaels for a Beginning Marathon training group. Our group name is 26Dot2 Marathuners! We have an awesome group of runners. I personally am a little nervous about being a run leader, because I myself have not completed a marathon, yet. However, I love to cheer for and encourage people that are out there making the attempt and having fun pounding the pavement. So I hope I can take the role of cheerleader and encourager. I also love being paired with Bobby has he has inspired me so much to this point.

After everyone said their name, I asked everyone to say their name again with their favorite color. I can do pretty well at remember attributes about people and can usually learn names by association. I think I have about 1/2 of the group committed to memory, but hope to get the other 1/2 by next week. We all headed out to do a 5 mile loop. I was a little worried about being able to do all 5 miles, but I got them done. It wasn't too awful of a time considering I haven't been running longer than 3 for a month.

After the run, I went and supported my dad's entry at a car show in Sapulpa. Here are some pictures of him with his car that he has put a lot of blood and sweat in to.
For those of you that are really into cars too, here is what it looked like as you approached. In my family, we (primarily my brother and I) refer to this car as the sleigh...



The weather Saturday was great, and it was nice to veg out outside and not have to do a whole lot.

I decided on Thursday once I got the all clear to run from the doctor to sign up for the Estim8ur. I signed up for the 4 mile run. I have to admit that I looked up Bobby's guessed time and added 4 minutes and a little, knowing that Bobby is pretty consistent and I would be slower because we were running 5 miles on Saturday. It was a nice morning for a run. It was great that the Estim8ur started at 7 to beat some of the sun/heat/humidity. The air was a little thick but I relaxed pretty quicklky knowing that i had guessed a relatively slow time (14min/mil). As I climbed up the rocks from part of the trail portion of the route, Roman was nice enough to cheer me to the finish. He provided some humor by commenting that I wanted to look good at the finish, I joked and told him that I didn't look good when I started. He then had a quick reply of "well then you'll have improvement". It made me laugh and gave me the push to run all the way up the hill and around the pavillion. As I turned the corner, I saw the race clock it read 57:10. At first I was a little bummed, I had guessed 56:20. Then I hear Brian make an announcment that the top 10 were all within a minute of their time. I realized that I had indeed guessed within a minute of when I finished. At the end of the day I would up placing 9th female in the 4 mile run. I was so excited. I'm never top 10 in any running event. I still just run events for fun, but it was a nice self-esteem boost to do so well in this event.

Thanks Brian, Ken, Kathy, and the rest of the TATURS for the Estim8ur!!