Back to the Your Regularly Scheduled Blog...

Two blogs has turned out to be more work than I can handle at this point in time.

Sad day.

So, if you're interested in following our journey from couch potatoes to half marathon runners, you can read about our progress at...

www.jennfaulk.com

Thanks!

The Trainers

Serious running is different now than it was in 2003, believe it or not. I'm just a wee bit older (just a wee bit!), a little bit busier, and I have no beautiful Atlantic Ocean sunsets as rewards for my efforts. (All I'm seeing is fields of brown grass, y'all. Sing it with me -- Ok-la-ho-ma, OK!) Oh, and this time around? I have my very own personal trainers.



Don't be fooled. They look sweet, but right there in that stroller? Are two trainers that could give Jillian Michaels a run for her money.

Granted, both of them together weigh about 65 pounds, and the stroller is probably only forty pounds, so pushing it isn't all that difficult. What is difficult, however, is enduring the running commentary (pun intended) that comes with the company.

Here's a typical run for me these days...

1/2 mile in...

Ana: I think I would like a BIG donut.

Emma: I would like a LITTLE donut! HEY!!! There's a puppy! Arf! Arf! Arf!

3/4 mile in...

Ana: Mommy, it's hot out here!

Emma: Yeah! And you are going too slow, Mommy!

1 mile in...

Ana: I don't like this song. Can you change it?

Emma: Look at that puppy, Ana! Arf! Arf!

Ana: I think we should listen to the Mickey Mouse Club song.

Emma: NO! The Snow White princess song! And then, it -- arf, arf, arf! (laughing) Oh, that's a SILLY puppy over there!

1 1/2 mile in...

Ana: Hey, I can't get this water bottle open!

Emma: I will help you, Ana.... I cannot get it open, either!

Ana: HEY, MOMMY! (turning around in her seat and waving the bottle in my face) CAN YOU OPEN THIS?!

2 miles in...

Emma: Arf, arf, arf!

Ana: Arf, arf, arf! (No puppy in sight, y'all.)

2 1/2 miles in...

Emma: I would like to go home now. MOMMY! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!

Ana: Mommy, you sure are breathin' loud.

You can imagine, I'm sure, how helpful this is. Trying to do everything they need me to do while running and trying to keep up a conversation with them when they ask unnecessary questions? Well, it certainly makes for a harder workout. Despite the dialogue listed above that was indeed part of our last run, I was able to shave TWO MINUTES off of my time. How? It baffles the mind, y'all, but I think the girls actually HELP me run faster by getting my mind off the fact that I feel like I'm about to pass out.

So for that I say thank you, Trainer Ana and Trainer Emma...

Climbing Mount Sinai

When I was a junior in college, I had the opportunity to travel to Egypt for the summer. While we were there, we went to Mount Sinai, where we were able to climb to the very top. I didn't even make it a fourth of the way up. I remember feeling very foolish as I saw an elderly woman using a CANE coming back down the mountain later on that day. Surely something was wrong if I couldn't do the very same at the age of twenty-one. But what was I going to do? That was life.



A year later, it became crystal clear that if I was going to keep up with the young students I was working with in Namibia, I would need to be more in shape than I was. Far away from the temptations of fast food and mindless hours of television (we got ONE station there in Namibia), I realized that if I was going to make a real change, this was the perfect time to do it. There was no shortage of beautiful seaside places to run, so I put on my running shoes for the first time. There were some embarrassing moments (like when I tried to run three miles with a marathon training group and was lapped several times by some of them!), but after two years of giving it my snail pace best, I could have at least hung with the eighty year old ladies climbing Mount Sinai. (However, I may have required the use of a cane to do so.)



At this point, I feel like I'm facing another Mount Sinai of sorts. I keep waiting for this whole running thing to come more naturally, but it's work, each and every time I put on my running shoes. The temptation right now is to shrug my shoulders and say, "But what am I going to do? This is life." But I can see, by looking at these two pictures and reading what happened in between them that I can do this and that this new goal doesn't have to be another Mount Sinai.

This next week we're moving up to three miles a day. Wes is already there (overachiever!), and I'll be running right behind him... wish us luck!