I've registered for the marathon!!

Last January as a gym member, but a non-runner, a work friend persuaded me to try running. I reluctantly tried but was very surprised when I managed to run for a half hour non-stop! On telling my friend, Phil, he convinced me train for the Dublin Marathon this year & depending on my progress, to enter. I got off on a very good start & eventually traded in the treadmill for the tarmac. I hated it at first but I grew to love it and equally grew to hate my faithful treadmill runs. I was hooked! However, training took a turn for the worse when motivation started to slide for Phil & I. We had traded in our training sessions for too many nights out on the tiles & kept telling ourselves "there is plenty of time left!!" Well time was ticking away & what had became our dream of running the Dublin Marathon, had become our nightmare....... it was now or never. Lucky for us Phil found a training programme for us from the official Dublin Marathon website which for the exact amount of weeks left to go until race day so we put on our runners & headed for the park............... Getting back into training was harder than we thought. We had become unfit from living a party life too much & training too little. My lungs felt like those of an old man in comparison to a few months earlier, but I thought "that is the price to pay if I want to reach my goal." We have now put our heart & souls into training & I am pleased to say we have regained our fitness. Last Sunday we even exceeded it when we ran our first 10 miles! I feel like that alone is a huge achievement as I never would have thought this time a few months ago I would make it as far as that. The 10 mile run was hard work for the last few miles but I have surprised myself by not getting an aches & pains yet. Though I did get jelly legs when I finally stopped after running a solid 1 hour and 43 minutes! Ha Ha. Following that we still managed our scheduled run yesterday of 30 minutes (still no aches & pains!) & may even possibly swap tomorrow's run for tonight as we have definitely caught the running bug now. We also persuaded our friend to come along with us yesterday. She did very well as a non-runner & I think if she continues to train she will be ready & able for the London Marathon next year. I hope so as I would hope that after catching the running bug from Phil, I could pass it on too for someone else to feel the growing achievement that we feel.