Summertime Blues

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that we're technically in week 6 of training for this bugger. Emphasis on "technically" because my body feels more like week never-have-run-before-in-my-life. 

If anyone ever asked me for my "expertise" (clearly I'm using some major air quotes here) on marathon training, my one and only morsel of knowledge would be, DO NOT choose a marathon in which the bulk of your training falls in the dead of summer!! And, I'm not just saying that because of the brutal heat, because let's get real here... we'd probably find a way to complain about the weather no matter what time of year it was. 

The reason summer training is the total PITS is because it is so friggin' busy. Weddings and vacations and parties, oh my! Life is truly tough right now. No really, it is. Just ask my weakening legs. 

But for reals, it's one thing that I haven't been able to run alongside my training buddies in ohhh... well, I can't even remember the last time. But I haven't even seen them at all! Zilch. Nil. Nada. Liv moved an entire 100 yards away from me within the office, so she might as well be in Southeast Asia. And I'm pretty sure Megs' and my calendar got together to conspire against us and ensure that neither one of us is ever in town at the same time.  (sigh). 

Anyway, we're all slowly trucking along with plenty of gripes and ailments to boot. We've all managed to talk ourselves out of this thing at one point or another, but thankfully, we're all still hanging in there. 

Holy smokes make that countdown clock stop!

lululemon run club

Liv + Sal joined up with the lululemon run club this Sunday for a little break from our usual weekend running routine - and we were in for quite the wake-up call. The group met in front of the Georgetown lulu store @ 9 am for a dynamic warm-up with Chris McQuilkin of Crossfit. 

We then took off running before truly deciding if we'd follow the 3 mile or the 6 mile group, but sadly, that decision was made for us about 1 minute into the run. We've never claimed to be speedy by any stretch of the imagination. But jeepers, we felt like grannies with that crew! I mean, we're not even sure how it's physically possible to go any faster than we were - our legs simply wouldn't move faster. Before we knew it, we were dead last and had to hustle to keep up with the danglers in the 3 mile group.

Being in the back of the pack can certainly be disheartening, but the lulu crew was very laid back and encouraging. They slowed down a bit and ran alongside us to help us push through to the end. Liv handled it like a rock star, but Sal could only grunt in response to their perfectly polite attempts at conversation. It wasn't pretty. 

The run wrapped up at Georgetown's infamous "Exorcist Stairs"....   

We met Crossfit Chris at the stairs for a lesson in proper lunging, and then he decided to further punish us with a lunging/push-up/running up and down the stairs exercism that still today has left Sal slightly handicapped.

The morning wrapped up with some lovely little treats from Baked & Wired courtesy of lulu (thanks guys!) so it certainly made it all worth it. We'll definitely join the club again - we just hope to be slightly speedier the next go around.

Thanks for all of the support and helpful advice, lulu! See you next time err... whenever our legs quit feeling like jelly.