I’m not a runner… yet.

**I wrote almost all of this post yesterday but got hit with an unbelievable migraine. I’m not sure if it was from the running but it did start right after I was finished. I figure I was either dehydrated, wasn’t breathing right or my body was trying to kill me in protest of me making it work so hard. Either way I survived. Carry on.**

The idea of being a runner has always been appealing to me. Number 5 on my 30 by 30 list is running a marathon. My older brother, aunt and grandma all run marathons. My grandma is actually the most enthusiastic of them all. When I told her I wanted to run a marathon she about died of happiness. Then she immediately encouraged me to sign up for the Chicago marathon this year. This year, as in, in October. As in, in six months. At first I went along with it because I didn’t want to disappoint her. However, several stressful weeks and a couple nightmares later I questioned why I was going to kill myself by having my first race ever be the Chicago marathon.

Even when I was in the best shape I’ve ever been in I wasn’t able to run for more than a couple minutes without dying. Now? It’s bad guys. I am lucky if I can go a minute or two without sounding like an asthmatic 80 year old. Because of that I didn’t really know how to start being a runner. Thanks to inspiration from the fabulous JewliaGoulia I’ve officially started my journey from Couch to 5K or C25K. I’m really excited and I’m even more excited that there are twenty other people doing it with me. Seriously, so inspiring. I know myself and I need outside motivation to get things done. If it’s just me, I find a million and one excuses not to do things. When I have others keeping me accountable I am much more likely to get things done.

Today was day one and it starts off with an easy regiment of 60 second running, 90 second walking intervals for 30 minutes. Running for a minute should be a piece of cake, right? Yeah well, I’m seriously embarrassed to admit that it was hard. Way harder than I feel like it should have been. I did it though and I didn’t even die despite thinking I might several times. Joel was nice enough to agree to train with me and since my little brother was over he went along with us on our first run. We also drug Phoebe along.

She kept up pretty well.

By the end the she was really worn out though.

That’s about how we felt too.

We are so out of shape.

I think the lack of oxygen made us giddy.

I’m so glad I’m finally doing this. My goal is to sign up for a race later this year and to run Chicago in 2040, er, I mean 2011. It’s not too late to join in the fun either. If you’ve been meaning to start running but needed a little extra motivation scroll to the end of this post and add yourself to the list of other awesome wannabe runners. Either way wish me luck. Hopefully it will get easier and I won’t be gasping for air after only a minute of running. *hangs head* I’ll keep you updated on my progress.