Time management

There is a gentleman here at work that has run several marathons in his time. He doesn't run them anymore. A couple weeks ago (a month or two now) when I was asking him about running marathons I asked him why he doesn't run them anymore. He answered that he doesn't have the time. "There's a lot of preparation in getting ready for a marathon. I just don't have that kind of time these days." He shared that he used to take his lunch hour and jog - he had an entire hour and access to showers at work back then. He lived close enough to that job that he was able to run to work. And the final piece that seemed to make it all work for him was that his supervisor was also a runner, therefore taking the time to achieve his goals was more available then than now.

My coach was running along side me on Saturday morning as she does for a bit of each of our group training sessions - I love that she checks in on me. As we ran I was asking questions about the run, the course, we chatted about interval training, all that good stuff. I told my coach that I appreciate that she takes the time to slow down her own run to jog along with me and that's when she let me know that the coaches on the team do not run this event that we are training for. On the event day she and the others will be jogging along offering support and assistance just like they do now during training. Then she added that she was pleased to be running slow today; she had done her hard run the day before and has another big training run coming up the next day. So, she is running a marathon, just not this one? Iasked. Yep, she'll be running the Boston Marathon...she and her husband (whom she can barely keep up with - and here I thought I was the only slow one). This is what she does. She runs.

I am finding this training does take up time. The Tuesday night and Saturday morning training sessions, even though the run itself is only 40 to 50 minutes (and growing), it is a 3 hour chunk out of my day to go do this. This is not whining, this is pride. I actually can't think of anything I would rather be doing. I look forward to the time spent doing exactly what I'm doing. And now I can see what the man in my offices is talking about. The more I put into it, like anything, the more I get back out of it.

On a side note - Fundraising has been interesting too. If you'd like to help please go to Sarah Runs and help us fund cures for cancers - something we can all help with.