2 Milestones, 1 Very Surreal Day!

It’s been a very surreal day.

What could I say that the picture doesn’t already? In this case a picture is worth a thousand million words. When I stepped on the scale this morning and saw a “1″ before my weight, I wanted to run through my house and scream to the top of my lungs. (I didn’t, only because my family was still asleep!) I was SO happy and couldn’t stop smiling all day long. It’s like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders. I realize that I still have a long way to go before I reach my ultimate goal -before I’m at a healthy weight- but reaching this milestone changed everything for me. Suddenly, I don’t feel as overwhelmed about facing the rest of this journey.

The end doesn’t seem so far away now.

It’s within my reach.

I can visualize it!

So that’s milestone #1. I’m walking in ‘Onederland’! Aaaaaagh!!!!

Now onto milestone #2!

The other day I mentioned that today was my first training run with the running coaches for Caleb’s Crusade (the group I am running the Disney Half-Marathon with/for). But I realized when I read Karyn’s comment that I never talked about the actual training or running coaches yet. That was one of the reasons why I chose to participate in this race, because the training program looked so solid. Every Saturday we will meet at 5:30 AM to do our practice runs. (YES, 5:30 AM) They will have running coaches and walking coaches to work with us, which really excited me. Well, this morning was our first day of training. I overslept, so I didn’t get there till about 5:40 AM, but luckily, they hadn’t started yet. The route today was 4.5 miles long, but if we wanted we could stop at the water stop and loop back which would have been 3 miles. They told us just to go at our own pace, which I did. I started off walking for about 1/4 mile and then began to run. Lynne was there with me and we were basically side by side during the entire run, which was GREAT! She rocked it by the way!!!!

Anyway, we made it to the water stop so I knew we had went 1.5 miles at that point. I didn’t want to turn back – I wanted to do the full 4.5 miles. My initial goal was to run to the half point, but I surprised even myself when I kept running even after that. We looped back and made it to the water stop again, which meant we had gone 3 miles…and I was STILL running. At this point, my body was like on auto pilot. I was in some sort of zone where I wasn’t concerned with my breath, or soreness, or anything. I was just simply going…and I kept on going right up until the end. All in all, I RAN 4.25 miles non-stop. Technically, it was probably more like jogging, but WHATEVER. We did the entire route in about an hour which meant we were going at about 13:33 pace!

My legs were like JELLO once I stopped. I could barely stand, so I didn’t. I plopped on the ground and one of the other runners graciously brought me a Gatorade which was AWESOME at that moment.

I was in disbelief. I started questioning the distance, thinking maybe they mis-measured and it wasn’t really 4.5 miles. It couldn’t have been. I *couldn’t* have ran that far. So when I left, I actually followed the route again with my car and sure enough, it was 4.6 miles according to my car’s odometer. WOW.

I did it.

I REALLY did it!

So, yes. It was a very surreal day with two very big milestones reached in my journey.

My running goal was to be able to run 2 miles by the end of May and a 3 miles by November. It’s May 8th and I ran 4.25 miles.

Between that and the fact that I’m now under 200 pounds for the first time in over 12 years? What more could a girl possibly want?

Surreal indeed!

158.7 miles walked/jogged/ran since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 500)
49.5 miles biked since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 300)
(5) 5Ks finished since January 1st. (2010 Goal: 12)