a brand new year

A new year, a new training season, new runners amongst us, and a new round of ITB screams. It's FANTASTIC!! I woke up this morning feeling like a kid at Christmas. Today is the first day of official 2010 spring marathon training and I'm so excited that I almost don't need coffee to get me going! I haven't gone completely mad, though, so I fill up the moka pot anyway. Normally, I'd be scrambling about searching for a sock while burning my hands on the bread pan that I just ripped out of the oven and eating my oatmeal out of the pot on the way to the start line. This morning, however, I put on both socks at the same time, ate my oatmeal in front of the news (still out of the pot, though), and left with unblistered hands because the post-race bread was made the day before! Henry even got extra time outside, running about the snow before reclaiming the last of the melting snowman that each of his neighboring pup friends had briefly taken ownership of.

It was icy and cold, but that didn't stop the 100+ runners from piling into the overflowing parking lot at Hefner. What a cool sight it is, too. There is nothing like watching everyone scurry out of their cars, bundled to the point of unrecognizability, and hearing all the garmin beeps as we take our first steps onto the street. For six miles (well, seven if you're in my group that missed the turnaround because we were yammering), I listened to family holiday horror stories, nervous chatter about marathon training, and grandiose New Year's resolutions, and it was perfect....absolutely the way a training run should be.

Those seven miles were supposed to be followed by a few more on the Arcadia trails - a fun run put on by a friend of mine. It's worth mentioning that the longest course he has measured out for us is 50K. Sounds fun, eh? You can, of course, choose your own distance. I chose four. My leg, however, chose .75. Guess who won. Luckily, I was in the company of someone who HATES trails with every running fiber of his being and was more than happy to escort me back to the trail head. No, really. If he said that he truly thought that the trails intentionally moved about to position roots in the perfectly to bring him down attempting to actually knock his legs off his body, thereby causing him to never run again, I'd venture to say that he actually believed it. Nevermind this amusing, albeit irrational, fear of nature running, I was grateful for the companionship. So off we went with day one of spring training officially down - a few miles shorter than planned, but happily headed home to wrap up in something warm.