Missing Team in Training

I miss a lot of things from the US - cereal and milk, no honking, real Mexican food, rules and order etc. What I miss the MOST is running with my Team in Training group.  For years my Saturdays from May to November consisted of getting up at 4:45am and driving to Terry Hersey Park and then running for hours with my peeps. There is something really cool about meeting a group of strangers for the first three mile run and and then months later spending 5 HOURS running together on a glorious 21 miles run. You make a lot of friends when you have hours stretched before with nothing to do but run and chat :)  many people train for Half Marathons but I always trained for the full marathons and I was the slowest.  So every week I came in last, but every week my teammates would be waiting for me and (whoever was running with me) to cheer me on and eat breakfast with me at the picnic tables.  I'd get in my car all sweaty and smelly and drive home.  I'd get out of the car and limp up the stairs and stagger into the shower.  I would painfully get dressed and hobble down the stairs, put ice on my knees, make lunch, and lay on the couch watching Lifetime and Hallmark movies.  People don't think that sounds like a great Saturday, but it is the BEST Saturday.  As a Team in Training mentor I loved encouraging other runners and keeping their mind off the pain with funny stories from school :)

People always thought I was weird for spending my Saturdays like that.  and for spending my money to travel to cities in order to run a race.  People don't think that's a vacation, but I enjoy seeing a city on foot :) I also enjoy going to TNT events and hearing stories of survivors - people who beat Leukemia due to the money TNT training raised for research. 

I talked my friend Norma into running a few half marathons with me and this year I convinced her to train with my team!!  and she is taking two more people - Dawn and Cortnee who both worked with Norma and I in Texas.  I cannot wait to hear about all their adventures! And run with them on June 9^th at the best running park – Terry Hershey Park!  It will be such a change of pace from running in Mumbai.

January of 2011 was the last time I ran a race for Team in Training.  I did the Goofy Challenge at Disney World.  You run a half marathon on Saturday and a full marathon on Sunday -39.3 miles!  Painful but you get 3 medals for running 2 races!  I had such a great time that weekend.  There was a big group of experienced TNT  people who did that race with me.  I am not nearly as talented a runner as most of them so I was in way worse shape than them after the race.  I remember we were sitting in the airport to go home and one of the participants asked if we thought we could have run that distance in one day ( a marathon is about 42 km and a half is about 21 – so we ran 63 km) She suggested we sign up to run a 50k together.  If you can image a bunch of people who were in so much pain they can barely move – we had to lift each other up to board the plane.  But we all agreed we could do a 50k in one stretch.  I remember laughing because it was so ridiculous that we were willing to do that when we were so messed up from this race. 

Runners are a weird strange bunch.  But I love them.  And I love being a part of them. J