Running Anniversary Retrospective - Tying Up Loose Ends

This post will tie up the loose ends from my Half-Marathon to the beginning of this blog in July 2006.

The following weekend after the half-marathon, when my final exams and final papers of grad school were over and done with, I went home to Philly to run in the Annual Broad Street Run - a 10 miler which begins in North Philadelphia in front of Girls High and runs to South Philadelphia with the finish line in the Naval Shipyards. The day before the run, my friend Coleen was hosting a pub crawl as a fundraiser for her participation in the 3-day breast cancer walk. I posted my response on her evite page, stating i'd be there for the earlier portion of the crawl but would have to get home at a decent hour to be well rested for the race the next morning.

A few days later, I got an email from someone who I probably hadn't thought of in close to 14 years - a woman named Jenna who I went to high school with. She was two years ahead of me in school (same year as Coleen) and we all acted in our high school musicals together. Turns out Jenna had read my post on the evite and was also going to be running in the Broad Street run as well. We caught up with each other over several emails and discovered we'd been on similar paths - moved away for college only to find our way back to Philly in our thirties, worked in non-profit organizations, recently discovered running and both had an interest in making a career change within the legal sector. Not only was it cool to reconnect with someone back home, but it also was a blessing that I found someone else who was as committed to her running as I was.

In New York I had Lee, Janet, NYRR's, etc. to keep me in shape and focused towards my running. Now, I was leaving that support group and was facing my biggest challenge yet in training for my first marathon, but I didn't know where or who to turn to to begin. This is when Jenna told me about Phillyfit's marathon training program and well, the rest is history if you read the beginning of this blog to this point.

Jenna and I carpooled at the end of May to our first group run with Phillyfit at Valley Forge park. That first day I ran the three-mile pace run with Diana, one of the assistant coaches who works for the FBI (I just thought that was the coolest thing). I also had a chat with Stuart, one of the faster runners who also had an appreciation for the arts. In the earlier, shorter runs (from 4 - 8 miles) I met and ran with a couple who had just moved up from North Carolina, Tom & Amy as well as Gretchen, a nurse who lived by the Art museum and whom I would meet up with along Kelly Drive on occassion to get some weekly runs in. As exciting and unsettling as the transition moving back to Philly and starting a new life was, I always had my running and the support of other runners to escape to - it made my life feel "normal" regardless of what was happening.

This concludes my retrospective of my early running days in the Spring of 2004 to my first marathon in the Fall of 2006. It feels like the close of a chapter in my life. What's the next chapter? I start training for my first triathlon February 4th....so stay tuned.