I'm slowly working up a running base again after nearly a year of almost no running at all. Before I can start the training program I want to do, I need to be able to do a long run of eight miles. I'm afraid of hurting my knees by increasing the distance too much, too fast. That happened when I started running again after coming back from Morocco. I'm trying to prevent that by not increasing my distance more than 10% a week. I'm also babying my knees by running really slowly to get started. A couple of weeks ago, I covered up the speed on the treadmill display and adjusted it until I thought I had a pace I could keep up for a long run. When I looked at the display, I found I had set it at 3.3 miles per hour. That's an eighteen minute mile! First of all, I didn't know I could actually run that slowly. Secondly, at that pace, a marathon would take about eight hours.
Fortunately, I've been able to progress some since then. This past week I had 4 runs: 2.5, 4.6, 3.8, and a long run of 7 miles. I'm run/walking my long run and averaged 13 min miles that included my warm up and cool down. I'm hoping to ease into my first eight mile long run next weekend. 

I can't get over how cool it is to have a blog for us! I've never had a blog before, which probably makes it even more "cooler"!
So, I guess one of the fears that's been plaguing me for this coming year is that I will lose motivation... or perhaps maybe I won't gain the motivation I need in the first place. I commented to Husband Craig not too long ago that my motivation for running has been just about the lowest it's been, despite of the fact that I'm signed up for 2 races at the moment. I will pray that God grants me the desire to get moving.

Julie here.
When Kris first brought up the idea of running a marathon together, I was hesitant. I think I've always thought that I would eventually get around to that goal, but becoming an adoptive mother of three sisters almost two years ago now has slowed down my running aspirations. The two years before we adopted I trained for and ran  two half marathons - one in November of 2009 and one in November 2010. After the girls came home, I was running infrequently but quit altogether last January when I had orthopedic surgery after shattering one of the bones of my left arm when I was roller skating. For most of the last year I 've stuck to low impact exercising. I just started running again this fall.

All five of us ran in Run for the Heart in December

The first race I ran in since my accident last year was the 5K Run for the Heart in Warsaw, Indiana. I did a run/walk with my 12 year old and 11 year old daughters. We did a ratio of 2 minutes running/1 minute walking and came in at 45 minutes or so. At times running with my girls has been like pulling teeth. This race, however, we must have hit just the right pace and attitude because we had a lot of fun. We do a singing game while we are doing our run/walk. While we are running someone has to think up a song that we can all sing. When we switch to walking, we have to sing the song that person picked until the running interval starts again.

Well, we took the first big step.... we are both signed up! I can't say that there isn't any anxiety or apprehension about the whole thing, but I can say that there's this tinge of excitement about it all!