An Introduction

40 days until the MARATHON. 

I can still remember when it was weeks, months, a ridiculous number of days AWAY and now we're less than 6 weeks out? Am I freaking out?  YES.  Are D and A freaking out?  Probably not... they have cooler heads and don't cooler heads prevail?  Plus, D has done long runs, like longer than I have ever run runs... meanwhile I'm happy with a 10.05 mile run yesterday because it was my longest non-race run.  Of course I was supposed to log more miles but there's still time, right?

Our background

If you've ever run a race, you know there's a fantastic energy around it- some excitement and anticipation mixed with a little anxiety and a ton of adrenaline that somehow culminates in an intoxicating atmosphere, it's addicting.  I noticed it at my first half marathon (story for another day) and every race since, including that one time when a man bouncing 2 basketballs passed me on an uphill... 

So to make a long story short, DAM came together leading up to Philly's Broad Street Run in an innocent group chat.  It was innocent at the time but quickly evolved into many things, including, but not limited to- peer pressure to sign up for a race (like a FULL f*cking marathon); funny run memes, complaining about weather we had to run in, a lifeline for motivation when you don't want to run; a wishlist of expensive run equipment we liked, wanted, needed, HAD TO HAVE TO RUN, etc.

On March 27th, the Philadelphia Marathon sent out an email entitled, "Introducing the First-Ever Philadelphia Challenge".  If you know me, you know I'm a SUCKER for medals and extras.  Would I normally care about a limited edition half-zip? No.  Did I want the limited edition half-zip? I don't know... ::reads:: 

"Runners who participate in both the 2018 Blue Cross Broad Street Run and either the AACR Philadelphia Marathon or Dietz & Watson Half Marathon will receive a limited edition half-zip, pullover fleece in recognition of their completion of the Philadelphia Challenge."

Ok fine, we want it.

BOOM, that email lit a proverbial "𝓁𝑒𝓉'𝓈 𝓇𝓊𝓃 𝒶 𝓂𝒶𝓇𝒶𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓃" fire and our group chat mistakenly sprinkled gasoline on it... I say it was a mistake because before we knew it, we were all registered for the Philadelphia Marathon.  And why stop at just the marathon?  Why not get an extra medal by doing a weekend challenge??  We aren't crazy, we have never ran a marathon so we weren't going to do a half and full marathon on the same weekend... that's honestly not in my wheelhouse of abilities right now.  So we registered for the INDEPENDENCE CHALLENGE, aka 8k on Saturday and full marathon on Sunday.

Basically...

We *positively* peer pressured each other into signing up.  I believe D registered first, then I registered April 23rd.  And on April 23rd, November 18th looked ｓｏ． ｆａｒ． ａｗａｙ． That's probably because it was; plenty of time to train... In fact, so much time that you couldn't even start one of the [many] popular marathon training plans because we were too far out from the marathon.  And now, when it's October 9th... November 18th feels like it's around the corner.


-M