I suspect the my quest for personal balance will be a lifelong journey. I struggle to create good habits much like my anus struggles to eject waste. It’s a bloody affair.

Nevertheless…

On this, the 20th day of my latest self-assigned challenge (and blog), I started the day scared shitless (almost literally) of the speed with which the upcoming event is approaching: namely, ze marathon. I got up, got dressed in my jeans and went out on a walk. It was early in the morning so it was cool and the walk was not hard. I walked to the nearby elementary school, went all the way around it and came back.

I can’t even run for a full minute yet so I know I have a lot of work ahead. So I got to thinking… if I do many smaller walk/run sessions, they might add up to more than a single hard walk/run every other day. I still don’t have a training plan drawn up and the ones available on the internet aren’t going to work for me. They are all too aggressive.

I asked my sister (who has been a runner for years) what those podcasts were that she had recommended to me four months ago (which is really when I should have started training to begin with). I started listening to the first of a series of 10 short podcasts designed to start newbie runners on the right path. That podcast made it clear to me that my goal of running a marathon in six months really is crazy. The podcaster says “if you follow my instruction, you may be ready to run your first 10k in a year.” oh. my. god. Well, a marathon is 42.2k, so… Oh boy…

But enough with the fueling of the fear, amiright? I decided to postpone my decision on whether I should cancel the whole trip to California until next month. My kids are already looking forward to it, my neighbor who is also running the same marathon says six months of training is good enough. But she can already run and doesn’t know my fitness level, so…

A couple hours later I got my hydration vest out, my favorite exercise pants and headed out in the midday heat to go on a longer walk. I didn’t plan on running, I just know I need to get used to doing -anything- in the heat. I was going to go out again at night for another walk but I went grocery shopping instead and stuffed my face with food afterwards: another bad habit I need to change.