Erin and Ellen are planning on thinking about considering signing up for a half marathon.

Ellen: And now we wait.

Erin: For what?

Ellen: For our friends to rain on our run parade.

Erin: Do I get to be Barbara Streisand or do you?

Ellen: Once again,  WHAT are you talking about?

Erin: Your real IQ may be Mensa-worthy, but your pop culture aptitude is a serious cause for concern. Now I’m not only worried about you—I fear for your daughters as well.

Have you really not seen Funny Girl? It is not only one of MY favorite movies of all times—it’s a bona fide, rock solid, true classic. I LOVE me some Fanny Brice.

Ellen: STILL not getting the connection.

Erin: Hellooooo!! The song you referenced? “Don’t Rain On My Parade” is THE song from that movie. Ask any drag queen.

 

Ellen: I’d rather ask a drag queen about Streisand movies than ask our friends what they think about us running a half marathon. Can you say holy-debbie-downer-overreacting-out-of-left-field-dogpile?

Erin: Not three times fast. But our tweeps are so supportive! Seriously, I send one little tweet about lacing up new running shoes and I can barely tear myself away from the computer. It’s a virtual lovefest!

Ellen: Sure, the internet is super supportive. . . until we get our integrity speared by passive aggressive emails or our comments bombed or an icky post dropped onto our Facebook page.

Erin: Oh, yeah, THAT.  But to be fair to our solid three dimensional friends, I think that their two and three cents comes from a deep well of love and, at least in my case, a fair amount of concern.

Ellen: Okay, but I don’t need ANY more negativity worming its way into my head. I myself can’t believe that my legs are going to make the distance. I’ve felt the adrenaline boost of a 5K, but in my day-to-day running it seems far away. My legs always feel like lead.

Erin: What is this adrenaline rush of which you speak? The only 5K I have ever run was for my kids’ school, and while there was a fair amount of dramatic bouncing and surging, in the end it would not qualify as a legit race mostly because my competition was nuns in full habits.

But here is the ugly truth: I hate running. I have to wear two bras, I’m slow, and my hair fights me—viciously. So in the end, my chest hurts, my legs are sore, and I have hair clinging to my eyeball. It is sadism at its best.

They are spry and have God on their side.

Ellen: So maybe our friends are doing us a favor by questioning our abilities to run this race. You certainly haven’t presented a very good case for yourself.

Erin: Hold on a hamstring stretching second! I’m a new woman. This Swimmer Girl has found her inner Runner Girl. I may not be a superstar, but I’m committed. And to quote our girl, Fanny, I am ready to march my band out. I am ready to bang my drum.

Ellen: Okay Fanny, you may need to be committed somewhere because it sounds crazy that you are running at all if you don’t like it. Why are you doing it?

Erin: TV Tag.

Ellen: Are you even going to make me ask you?

Erin: Oh, you don’t remember TV Tag? Google it. Seriously, did we grow up in the same country? The same era? The same DECADE??

Ellen: I KNOW what TV Tag is. I don’t know how this relates to your Chariots of Fire saga.

Erin: I broke my leg in seventh grade playing TV Tag. My competitive streak goaded my athletic ability beyond its limits. I jumped a shrub and the shrub won.

But in all seriousness, that injury changed my life. My ankle has permanent problems, People, the kind that inspires a doctor to prescribe running as the ONLY way to strengthen it.

So here I am today, chugging along, marking my miles, and trying to dispel the myth that running is not my thing.
 Again, don’t tell me not to fly, I’ve simply got to. That’s from Funny Girl, you Cultural Wasteland Refugee. You know, in case you were wondering.

Ellen: Again with the Funny Girl, but here’s my deal: I love to run even though my body rebels. I have osteoarthritis behind my patellas, chronic plantar fasciitis, and an ankle tendon that has been surgically repaired. I try to console myself that each foot strike strengthens my hips. A broken hip can kill you.

Erin: Yikes.You had me osteo, and now I will never look at a flight of stairs the same way again. But if I’m riding the Sadistic Train, you’re the engineer. Why do YOU run?

Ellen: Running makes me feel like an athlete. I was always the smart girl, and while I played sports, it was never really my niche. I was the smart girl on the tennis team, which is a very different category than being the smart tennis player.
I vividly remember wanting to get up and throw on my shoes to jog around the block. But I didn’t feel comfortable doing it. It just wasn’t something my family did.

Erin: So that explains why you force . . .

Ellen: Empower . . .

Erin: Your girls to run a 5K with you each year.

Ellen: As Jellybean (11) puts it, “I can’t even complain about being made to do this because everyone says, ‘Ooo, what a great mother you are for doing this with your kids.’”

Erin: She’ll thank you later. 

Ellen: It might take a couple of decades, like when she hits the “Fifteen After Forty”

Erin: Preach it, Sister. It’s so much like the “Freshman Fifteen”—but without the great skin and rocking social life.

Ellen: Yeah, my mind is not as crystal clear as it was in college either. Running helps to clear it. In a thirty minute run, I work out blog posts, scheduling dilemmas, and parenting challenges.

Erin: And let’s not forget that it just FEELS good to achieve goals. 

Ellen: There are no gold stars for folding laundry.

Erin: There’s not even gratitude, although sometimes the teens will give me an appreciative hug when I finish one of their loads for them. But running is a whole other story.

After I started my 10K training and ran my first five miles in a little under an hour, I was so completely psyched, I felt like I had just won a race. Or that pretty gold star. 

Ellen: You are rocking your training, but you know what has convinced me that we can move running a half marathon from the “Planning On Thinking About Considering” category to the “We WILL Do This” category?

Erin: New shoes? The knowledge that we’re not getting any younger? A lifetime supply of Motrin? Better jogging bras??

Ellen: BATS!

Erin: And you complained that my Funny Girl reference was vague? Even after YOU brought up the song. . .

Ellen: Just listen. I was running the other night at dusk when bats started swooping down from the treetops. My feet ate up the miles as if jet engines had replaced my Asics. I had forgotten what adrenaline felt like. It felt like success.

Erin:Well, now all I need to do is find us a nighttime marathon, a threat of deadly disease, or some impending apocalyptic disaster to make your running dream come true.

Ellen: OUR dream. We can do this. Together.

Erin (singing): “Get ready for me love, ’cause I’m a “comer”/I simply gotta march, my heart’s a drummer/Nobody, no, nobody, is gonna rain on our parade! ”

Ellen: Good grief! Maybe we’ll just high-five each other at the finish line.

 

And of course we’ve found some help on the interwebz.

Ellen swears by the Chi Running technique to reduce pain and injury.

Erin has gotten her training groove on at Marathon Rookie.

 

But if you need a little inspiration beyond two 40 somethings hauling their butts over 13.1 miles and the comic relief that might provide, here’s a little ebook Britely to help give you a boost. Go ahead and flip through it, it won’t take you away from this site. Watch out for the zombies!