A Plus Attitudes

I was recently invited to participate in a marathon relay with 5 women from my neighborhood. I was so excited when I received the invitation because I had been wanting to get back into a more rigorous running schedule. When I received the invitation, I jumped at the chance to do it without knowing what my distance was in the relay or how much time I had to train for it.

After I said “yes”, I looked up the date of the Marathon and discovered it is May 5 and that my distance in the relay is 4.8 miles. For you regular marathon runners, 5 miles doesn’t seem like much, but I have not been exceeding more than 3 miles of late and when I did the math, I realized I had only 5 weeks to prepare for the run. I also discovered that I am the most mature female of the group. I’m in the beginning stages of being an empty nester while the women I’m running with are pushing strollers and changing diapers.

I’m not all that concerned though because I have been running for years and have done long runs in the past, so I’ve got experience on my side and, while vacationing in Florida this past week, I took advantage of the nice weather and made sure I got in running and cross training.

We returned from our trip on Friday and I went out for a run yesterday. I was pleased to discover that when I was done with my run, I had clocked in 4.5 miles, so I’m already close to my race distance of 4.8 miles.

I’m not worried about whether or not I can complete the race and although I might be the oldest one on our team, I am setting an example for the younger women in my group that age is mostly a number. I don’t know what my time will be and I’m not going to dwell on that. I’m just going to enjoy the event and hopefully come home with a marathon relay t-shirt to add to my collection.