T N T

It is official I have completely gone way beyond what I ever expected! On November 18th I signed up to run a Marathon. I went into the meeting planning on signing up for the half marathon and was convinced to train for the full. For those of you who may not know…that is a total of 26.2 miles of running. After that night I was stoked but completely scared of what I had just done. Okay sorry I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that I cannot train for a marathon on my own so I decided to work with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. They have what is called TEAM in Training which provides coaches, mentors, and training materials to individuals in exchange for raising money for the Society. I am all about raising money for a good cause as you may have seen in other posts so the combination of training and fundraising was pretty appealing. I am required to raise a minimum of $1,900 by the race in March which is a little scary but I trust that with hard work and faith I will succeed. I will be running in the 2010 Shamrock Marathon in Virginia Beach on March 21st. I am so excited about this experience and hope everyone can come out to support our team!

Check out my web page at: http://pages.teamintraining.org/nca/shamrock10/ashaff

The official kick-off was Saturday December 5th. I was still at the excited but nervous stage so I was hoping it would be a good experience. To my surprise it was a great experience. Everyone there was so nice and really helpful. We all sat with our mentor and team mates so I got to know a lot of cool people. Sarah our mentor was as nice in person as she was on the phone and in her emails. I am going to attempt to share a little about some of my teammates without butchering their names or info. I also met Melissa who is running a Marathon for the first time. She and I both agreed we will need buddy runs to get us through the training. Maggee is running her first endurance event as well training for the Shamrock half marathon. Brett and Hayley are also running their first marathon. Paula I believe is doing the half marathon due to an injury. There were a few other people there that I didn’t get a chance to talk to very much and a few that couldn’t make it but I’m sure I will get to know them all pretty well over the season. I walked away from that first event excited and ready to go for the gold (so to speak)!

This first week I got in two pretty good runs and will be cross training tonight. I hope I am ready for the big team run on Saturday.

“Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” ~Unknown