Week 2..Liz

I'm happy to report that the successful completion of our second week of training has come and gone so before I go any further, I must shout out my celebratory WOO HOO!  Yes, that's right, 2 weeks down and 26 weeks to go and still going strong.  I'm specially proud of my self this week for moving forward in spite of a very sore ankle.  That in itself says a lot about how determined I am to do this marathon.  It would have been very easy for me to say ouch it hurts too much and give up.  Instead, after the trail fiasco on Tuesday, where I re-injured my ankle due to the uneven walking surface, Jess and I went back to the nice flat walking surface at Cerritos Regional Park on Wednesday.  I felt the difference immediately and I was able to complete the desired mileage for the day...so yay! 


Needless to say, the rest of the week went with out a hitch.  I'm pretty comfortable walking up to 4 miles with out any problems.  However, I'm not sure that I would go as far as to say that walking the 4 miles is easy yet!  In retrospect, I'm glad that we started our training program 4 weeks early. See, if we follow the actual training program we would training for 24 weeks, but instead of waiting we decided to start 4 weeks early and use the additional weeks to ease into things and "warm-up" for the actual training, bringing our total training time to 28 weeks.


So now the preparation begins for week 3, where the real challenge begins for me.  These last two weeks have been easy because I was still on my summer schedule.  I would work all day and had the afternoons free (and I use the term free loosely because how free are the afternoons of a parent?)  However, school has now started and the real fun begins.  Our regular routine of homework, fall sports, dinner, reading, shower etc begins and somewhere in between all of these things, I'm supposed to fit in training...!  Oh and all this needs to happen between the hours of 5:00-9:00p.m.  Sigh.  Well, no one said this would be easy!  So it begins, the madness that will be my life for the next 26 weeks...but hey, enough of that!  I am and will always be a cup half full kind of girl so as they say:  where there is a will, there's a way and all that.  I'll let you know how it goes next week.

Week two in the history books . . . Jessica

Well, Liz and I have completed week two of our 28 week marathon walking training plan! It's a big deal to me that we decided to start walking, and to start training for a marathon, and it will be a huge accomplishment when we actually cross that finish line, but actually being in the midst of working toward that goal is just as big of an accomplishment! These last two weeks, and the next 26, are the "hard" part - the part where there is no one cheering you on to the finish line, the part where you don't have the excitement and adrenaline of race day. In training you only have your own motivation - and luckily for Liz and I, we have each other's motivation to draw on when our own is obscured by sweat, or tiredness, or an aching ankle. The motivation can vary from day to day, it can be an old picture when I was my "ideal" size, the pride of being able to say "I did it," or a sexy pair of jeans in an equally sexy size. Liz and I were joking about putting each other's goals on our backs, so when one of us starts getting tired or frustrated, the other can walk in front as a motivator. I actually think this would be a brilliant idea for our longer walks and the actual marathon.

So, we walked another 12 miles this week, it broke down as 2, 3, 3, and 4. 3 miles is starting to feel really comfortable and 2 miles almost like cheating - although I do love being done that fast on those days! Saturday was a 4 mile day and we went down and walked at the beach in Long Beach. We ran smack dab into all of the women walking the Revlon Walk for the Cure marathon and half marathon and it was really, really inspiring!

I've been doing a lot of reading as well about the technical aspects of walking, and I'm trying to incorporate them so that I am walking correctly! I am looking forward to adding on mileage, so that I really feel like a distance walker. I know it will tough, but exciting at the same time.

Perspective...Liz

Today was the first day of our second week of training and it was interesting to say the least. Since the actual marathon will be mostly on a trail full of hills, I got what turned out to be a not so brilliant idea to introduce both trails and hills to our training right away. My thought process was that it was important we get used to the conditions that we would be experiencing during the event and the sooner the better! Sounds innocent enough right?

What I didn't factor in was how much pressure walking on a trail and on small hills would put on my ankle. The same ankle that is still recuperating from a hairline fracture! Needless to say, what should have been an easy 3 mile walk, turned into a very painful 2 mile one. I realized I was in trouble when the throbbing on my ankle stopped and numbness settled in...so I limped the rest of the way in.

While I was proud of my self for walking as much as I did, I have to admit there was also some disappointment mixed in. Did I just quit? Could I have continued? Then my partner in this stepped in and Jess put it into perspective for me. Stopping doesn't mean that I quit, it just means that my ankle is still healing and it was too soon to add trails and hills. What's important is that I get back out there tomorrow (granted, it will be on a nice even paved surface) and continue. So thanks Jess, this is a reminder of why we're doing this together and why I'm sure we'll succeed.