Life, it's a funny thing. For the past few years "life" hasn't turned out like we had expected. At least not the "life" we had hoped to have full of adventure, excitement and travel. Good, bad or indifferent life has been strange. Plans change - people come and go - goals are lost and obtained. It wasn't until a major life change and summer of boredom (both on my behalf) that we realized we were tired of the same old day-to-day life. We needed to do something about it!
I had been pestering Chanelle to start jogging with me after work. I thought we could train for a 5k or 10k sometime in the fall. Chanelle was on-board to run the
Rim-To-Rim with me in September and so we started our journey and completed our first work-out. It was
really hot - I didn't track our time very well and there was a lot of traffic. Fail. We decided running in the morning would be better and we would meet up every other day and stick to our program. Mornings turned out to be the best. Sunrise on the canyon rim gave us plenty of motivation - it's so pretty.
So, we were going along for all of 7 days and I was happy with our progress; still certain the 7.5 miles up and down the canyon would be a challenge - but excited for it anyway. And then I got a text: "I think we can be ready for the
PF Changs 1/2 Marathon December 2nd." I thought, and maybe said aloud, "You want to do what?" That Chanelle, she always takes it one step further than everybody else - but that's why we love her and why she makes one hell of a training partner (more to come on this). The grand optimist that I am replies with "For sure! Let's do it." I have actually ran
if you can call it that a 1/2 Marathon before in Arizona. I did it by myself. Didn't train well. It wasn't fun. I promised myself I would never do it again. Clearly I lied.
So, we've committed. Since our decision to run in Vegas we have been training fools! Unfortunately, we live 2 hours apart so our week-day runs are now solo with very early texts to keep each other in-line and compare our pace and mileage. We get to run together on the weekends.
We decided on Born2RunFree so we can share our journey to becoming better runners. I'm sure, like challenges in life, there will be good runs and bad runs - but it will be an adventure! We'd like to do 3 or 4 1/2 marathons a year with smaller runs in-between. Who knows where it will take us - but that's the whole idea. The adventure has begun...
XO,
Chantele
