My #1 Fan

From other's perspective, I may seem like an extremely self-motivated and anal marathoner when it comes to my training schedule, following it diligently, and checking each day off as soon as I finish my work-out. I suppose part of that is true, but the secret is, I have a live-in #1 fan who is constantly motivating me, challenging me...and literally pushing me out of bed in the morning to run 8 miles before work or 15 miles on a Saturday. My husband, Matt, would rather die than run even one block with me, but the encouragement and excitement he provides is just as good as a running buddy to me.

Last Friday I did my 11 mile run before the weekend since I was heading to Virginia Beach later that day for my friend Katie Kaschak's wedding (and man was it a beautiful wedding. Congrats to Katie and Tyler!). While I was on my daily visit to mapmyrun.com trying to figure out how to make this 11 miles interesting by myself, Matt volunteered to ride his bike next to me during my entire run the next day! I was so excited and immediately put down my computer when I realized this meant we could go south on the Monon Trail, which I'm "not allowed" (slash it isn't safe) for me to do by myself. So I ran, and he rode his bike (rrr...my Dad's bike), and kept me going the entire way. He sang songs like "Eye of the Tiger", the Rocky Theme song, and whistled the theme song to the Andy Griffith show, and just kept the chatting up so I stayed nice and distracted from running.

The next best part of the run was at about mile 8 when we were headed back north, Matt branched off real quick, went home, and got our dog Ike who joined us for the last 3 miles. Ike was in heaven, I had little things to look forward to throughout the run, and our family or 3 had one helluva fit morning!

This Saturday we're running 17 miles. My good friend Cease from IU/Theta just moved to Indy (YAY, CEASE!) and is training for the NY Marathon, so now I have a permanent training buddy. We did 13 together a couple of weekends ago and it was wonderful having her by my side the whole way.

Matt certainly isn't my only source of encouragement - everyone around me is and it's so helpful to have the support of the others. THANK YOU to each of you who have been cheering us on during our training and preparation! It actually makes us excited to run 26.2 miles in 2 months. :)