Flashback Friday

Yes, yes I decided to include my Flashback Friday's here.... now I can't guarantee that I will post it each Friday but I thought it would be fun to randomly talk about our past running life. So... for this post I will skip to the year 2003. (i would talk about my high school track days but really they are just embarrassing [what was i thinking running hurdles? i'm the most vertically challenged peeps ever! ... i couldn't even run a mile under 9 miles... my asthma attack during a track meet comp.... the fact that they tried to get me to sprint the 400.. ME.SPRINT.THE.400...no wonder track only lasted my junior year...tee hee]) (i think that's the longest paragraph side note I've ever written...)

So... 2003....

Jaylee was about 6 months old and I was about 40 lbs overweight (deja vu anyone?). The major difference was the fact that I was completely INACTIVE. The last time I had exercised was maybe a year and a half earlier when I was running with my Dad (I will talk about that eventually when I can great through THAT post in one piece). Yup. I was at my friend Tiffany's house and we both were talking about how we wanted to get back into running. And (shockingly) I suggested we go running in the morning. She told me she had a hard time waking up in the morning (what IS it with picking running partners that hate morningtime?) so I'd have to wake her up. :) I took that as a challenge and from that moment on Tiff and I were running partners. I would drive from Harrisville to Riverdale every morning at 5 o'clock to wake her up at 5:20 so we could be running by 5:30 (does ANY of this sound familiar?). We made a goal of running the Ogden Marathon. But, first, we wanted to run a half marathon. So... we looked and decided that we could be ready for a half marathon by November. The only half we could find was in Boise, called the Zeitgeist Half Marathon. I will spare you the details of our training (cause I'm pretty sure we've chatted about this on long runs...) but least to say we didn't "stay together" on the half.

Ladies, this half was INSANE! I.N.S.A.N.E. 6 of the 13 miles were straight UP HILL!! Now, I'm sure if I went back and ran it it wouldn't seem so impossible. But, at the time I was still overweight (although I had lost 25 lbs in 3 months.... yay for hyperactive thyroid! ... i miss that... sniff sniff) and I had been running for a total of 11-12 weeks...that's it. From couch potato to half marathoner. It was a KILLER. My asthma was dying, my legs were dying and when mile 10 came around and (finalllllly) we were able to run down hill I was so tired I walked. (this was before my stellar downhill training with Miss Manda) My first half marathon time? Get ready.... it's really slow..... get excited.....

2 hours 43 minutes

Yup. That means my miles were about 12:40.... AWESOME. :) Every time I get discouraged with my time (like after the first Ogden Marathon) I take a second and think about how bad and slow I used to be. Tee hee hee. And Tiff's time? It was 2 hours 13 minutes... so my whole goal last year was to beat that time... at the TOU Half when I came in at 2 hours 8 minutes? THAT's why I was soooooooo excited!!!!!!!!! Tee hee

So, this is what I propose ladies. I think we should take a weekend and go to the Zeitgeist Half Marathon. It's usually in November, up in Boise. Erin P.'s family lives there and I'm almost positive they'd let us crash on their couches. Just a thought... after all this hellish WRC crap we've been doing Zeitgeist can't be THAT bad!