I fell off the track but now I am back Day 34

Well as many of you know I had been away from my training for about a week because some big things happened in my family.

I was really frightened to run because between the heat and the notoriously bad air which now had smoke from fires burning all across California and my asthma I didn’t know if I was going to do this. But I finally came back and just in time to participate in hill training at Woodward Park. I can’t lie. I was scared! I hadn’t worked out in a week and last time we had done hill training I had almost passed out. And since we have already been in training for over 30 days I knew that hill training was going to be tough. But surprisingly enough it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined. We warmed up with a 2-mile run, stretched and then lined up to do our sprints, high knees, and lunges. Funnily enough, I think because I had a break from working out my muscles weren’t that sore during or after. I felt really good. Then we went to killer hill. The hill I had almost passed out after trying to run backwards. So I was intimidated to say the least. Especially because coach said we would run up the hill go around and down (about the size of a high school track) and that we were to do that 3 times without stopping to rest. And then we would do 2 more running backwards up the hill and then around (facing forward thank goodness). I was so proud of myself and my other teammates because we made it all the way around and then ran back to a spot where the mentors were kind enough to have cold towels, popsicles, Gatorade, and water! I felt like such a kid. All of us standing around sucking on popsicles, with ice cold towels draped around our necks just happy to be finished and getting cool.

After each training I am always apprehensive about my ability to finish the marathon, but when I sit down to write these blogs I realize just how far I have come in a little over a month and half. If I can go from couch potato to running bug I can eventually tackle the 26.2 miles around beautiful San Francisco. Exhaustion tasted like red, blue, and orange popsicles with ice cold towels on skin thirsty for some relief from the heat and dirt!

We don't always do everything we can, but in this instance you can! You can donate to a wonderfully worthy cause!

Roxanne Villaluz’s Team in Training Website

http://pages.teamintraining.org/cca/nikesf08/rvillaluz

Casimiro Llamas, Jr.’s Team in Training Website

http://pages.teamintraining.org/cca/nikesf08/cllamas