Why I decided to run...

On March 7, I was in Albertson's picking up comfort food: American cheese, cream of mushroom soup, angel hair pasta, Kozy Shack tapioca pudding.... Perusing the magazines at the checkout, I impulsively added Prevention Magazine's Walking issue and resolved to start exercising and cut out all of this artery-clogging food (as soon as I had eaten this last batch, of course.)

Prevention had articles on walking marathons, including a training plan and list of nationwide marathons that allowed walkers. I got excited and decided to walk a marathon. Alas, when I looked up the San Francisco Marathon on the web site, I found that it is limited to people who can complete it within 6 hours. That's a minimum of 13.74 minutes per mile -- a very fast walking speed. I resolved to get to the gym and start training.

I walked a lot in the next two weeks. In fact, on March 18, Michael's birthday, he and I did a twelve mile walk clear across San Francisco! We started at the Embarcadero and planned to hit every Ben and Jerry's along the way. We were under the impression that they gave out free cones on birthdays. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for our bodies) we were wrong about that. However, we did manage to scam one free cone from a nice cashier at the Fisherman's Wharf Ben and Jerry's. From there, we walked along the pier all the way to Fillmore, up the over the Fillmore hill, out Geary to the Russian Bakery, through Golden Gate Park to the beach, and back again to 25th Avenue where we had Chinese food for dinner. By the end of that walk, I could barely feel my feet.

On March 27, I met with the trainers at 24-Hour Fitness and expressed my goal to walk the San Francisco Marathon. They encouraged me to run it, or at least to run parts of it, instead of simply walking. I was skeptical. Doing intervals of 2 minutes running and 2 minutes fast walking on the treadmill for an hour that first time nearly killed me. That, and all the leg and core exercises that Tuelo, my trainer, had me do. But somehow, I knew I had to do this. So, on March 30, I put my knitting away for the Spring/Summer, paid my money, and officially signed up for the San Francisco Marathon.