How I'm going to run a marathon

“Train to run a marathon? You don’t need to train! Here’s how you run a marathon. Step one: you start running. There is no step two.”
-Barney on How I Met Your Mother

I am not an athlete.

I’ve never really been an athlete. Growing up, I was awful at every sport I ever tried. I’m inherently lazy as well – my motto has always been to never walk when I can ride and never sit when I can recline. Family legend has it I didn’t walk until I was 16 months old simply because I was lazy.

That’s why the idea of running a marathon terrifies me. And why, in 2010, I’m going to do just that. I am going to run a marathon when I’m 35 years old. And this blog is going to chronicle my training as I take myself from “zero to hero” in just three years.

I know, that sounds crazy. Why would a person like me actually take on something this momentous?

Before I answer that, a little bit about me. At this moment, I’m a 32-year old mother of two boys, ages 4 and 20 months. I work from home as a freelance writer and editor so I can take care of my kids. I edit boring technical trade magazines, and in September, I’m taking on a huge one-year contract to edit the magazine I used to do full-time, before I had kids. (I’m covering for the current editor’s mat leave.) I’m also taking over as president of the board at my sons’ preschool. Between juggling all that and continuing to work for my other clients, I must be crazy, right?

Probably a little! About a year ago, I caught a bit of the fitness bug. I gained a lot of weight when I was pregnant with my kids. Sixty pounds during the first pregnancy, which I managed to lose by going to one of those 30-minute fitness places and by following a popular low-carb diet. But during pregnancy #2, all of my bad habits crept back – laziness, a taste for junk food – and I once again gained 60 pounds.

Fat, flairless and generally disgusted with myself, I joined a gym with a daycare to try and shed those pounds. There, I discovered spinning (a group fitness class on stationary bikes) and the treadmill. Through the fitness classes and Weight Watchers, I once again lost the baby weight and got back to my usual self.

Then I realized I still didn’t much like my “usual” self. I’ve never been particularly skinny and always had a tendency to put on weight. With this new fitness kick I was on, I started to see some potential – a way to become the person I’d always wanted to be.

So I joined a “Learn to Run” class, and ran a 5K race in the winter. But in the middle of all that, we decided to sell our house and buy a new one and I lost momentum.

Which brings me back to the marathon! I have always said I want to run a marathon on day. And after everyone (myself included) stopped laughing at the idea, I realized I really want to make this happen. I know I can’t do it overnight – I need to train. So I set the goal: a marathon by age 35. That’s when I realized I’m already 32. I’d better get moving. So I’m officially starting my training this summer. There will be small goals along the way, but the official endgame is in 2010, when I’m aiming to run the Mississauga Marathon. That’s 42.2 kilometers.

So why the blog? Well, that’s where a different kind of ambition comes in. The fact is, for the past seven years, I’ve been writing about things like manufacturing, emergency preparedness, human resources and cable. (Yes, cable. Like the kind you hook up to your TV.) And while it pays the bills, it’s not really what I want to do with my life. I want to write about health, nutrition and fitness. I want to write books. I want to write for women’s magazines. But I’m so busy writing about everything else, I run out of steam when it comes to writing the “good” stuff.

That’s why I’m going to chronicle my training efforts in a blog. Not only will it give me practice writing about something I love, the end goal will be to have it published in a book. Even if it never gets published, at least I will know I’ve accomplished something.

Of course, the problem with starting this blog now and not after the fact is that the outcome is not guaranteed. I might call this blog “How I Ran a Marathon,” but until I cross the finish line in 2010, nothing is certain. I might give up. I might be too busy to finish it. I could injure myself. I could find out that I’m nothing more than another person who starts something but never finishes it.

I’m going to update regularly with how my training is going. Since I can’t do this all at once, I’m going to start with small goals. This summer, I have two: I am going to train to run a 5K in 25 minutes (currently my best time is 29:57) and I am going to train to do a 31K fundraising walk in September. (More on that later.)

Let’s get it started…