Official Kickoff

Well folks, today was the first day of marathon training for the Marine Corps Marathon. I completed a 3 mile run this morning that went fine except for the fact that my calves were killing me. They ached during the entire run and when I tried to stretch them out, it hurt even worse. It's not really anything that concerns me as it's happened before. I'm sure its just soreness from my hellacious hilly 7 mile run on Saturday. I even got up early enough today to do pilates before the run so I was good and stretched out, but it didn't make any difference. Hopefully all the soreness will be worked out by tomorrow.

Now back to the hellacious hilly run on Saturday. We have this really great park in Memphis-Shelby Farms- it's the largest urban park in the US and is 4500 acres total. I've talked about it before on this blog and I go there pretty often for runs, especially long runs. There is a trail called Tour de Wolf (a very sophisticated trail, it is) and it's a lot of fun. When you're in shape. When you aren't in shape, it pretty much sucks. It's about 7 miles total, which was perfect for my weekend long run. Except that I waited until 8:30AM when it was 100 degrees outside and like I said...I've sorta let my running fitness level drop. Back in the day, I could zip through that forest while leaping over stumps and rocks and sprinting up the hills. It was great fun, indeed. Well, I had that image of "fit April" doing all that zipping, leaping and sprinting and I was excited! But...it didn't exactly play out like that. Not at all. It was much harder than I remember and I had to walk off and on to make it through.

But you know what? It was still a success in my book. I ran my planned 7 miles and I got an awesome hill and core workout, in addition to the distance. And I know I'll get there...I'll be back, bounding through the woods in no time!