It takes a village

Once I decided to train for a full marathon in the fall (what was I thinking?), I started struggling to get my long runs in, since it was summertime in Arizona. I am a morning person, but I just couldn't get myself out the door early enough to beat the heat. So I spent the first few weeks of my training plan getting in runs that were much shorter than what I had planned.  I started to panic.

My very first full marathon back in 2000 (Maui) was with Team in Training. I had a sense of accountability, knowing that my team was meeting at a certain time/place and all I had to do was show up and get my run in.  So it occurred to me that I was missing that accountability to get me out the door in time.  I started to search for running groups.

I found a group in my town that was women - only and they meet at 5am on Tues & Thurs.  It was just the thing to get me out of the house (even though I hate getting up at 4:30).  The ladies are very positive and even though they aren't looking to get in much distance, I stay afterwards and get in more miles when we're done. So that solved my weekday problem. Yay! And I'm seeing a lot more sunrises these days, too.

Then I still had to tackle the long run on Sunday.  A former Marathon Bar teammate of mine runs a running group on Sundays and was posting about their weekly long runs. I decided that was the answer to my problem.  Several people meet up at 5am and go a variety of distances. It turns out that there is a guy who is also training for the Detroit Marathon who is in the group, so I totally lucked out there.   The group gets me out on the canal and from there it's just a matter of getting it done.

Don't be afraid to reach out to other people to help you accomplish your goals. Sometimes you just have to be resourceful. Luckily, I was open to meeting other runners and can live with getting up at the crack of dawn (for now, anyway). I'm so glad I turned to the internet to connect me to other runners suffering through an Arizona summer!

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