Calling all runners....

It was a balmy 37 degrees when I woke up this morning and I decided to head out for my first outside, in-the-cold, non-treadmill run since having the baby. In contrast to my last outside run waaaay back in March, an easy 8-miler in the morning before catering an evening event, today was a sad, slow barely-made-it 4 miler followed by flopping on the couch until my poor baby was hungry enough to force me to get up. Six weeks ago, the owner of my gym promised me I would have "no problem" getting back into shape after doing absolutely nothing for the nine months I was baking sweet Jemma. She was wrong. But it's possible that I might make it eventually...with a little help. Which is why I am starting a little running group and you're invited. I'll give you the basic plan here in case I have any readers who may want to join and then I'm actually going to call and harass those of you who I know run (or have at some point in the distant past...Rachel, Signe, Annie, Shawna...I know you're out there!). Our main goal this Spring will be to run Bloomsday (an immensely fun, HUGE, rowdy street race of 7.2 miles) the first weekend in May, the secondary goal will be to run the CDA 1/2 marathon on Memorial Day weekend. I will be posting all the details and much more on another blog that is invite only but the more the merrier so let me know here or by email if you're interested. Quick note, the only group runs will be the Saturday morning long runs so there is very little time committment involved (although you will have to do some amount of running--at the gym, outside, or in your basement--during the week and I will post my workouts in advance so you can follow those or do your own. And I steal mine from Runner's World so they should technically work--I'm not actually the one making them up!) and those runs will be mostly out-and-back runs so you can head home at any point if you want to run less or you have to feed the baby or go to the grocery store! More importantly, you do not have to live here--you can keep up with us on the blog and if you make it for Bloomsday or CDA that would be great but you can train for something local also. Let me know if you are even slightly intrigued and I'll send you the blog invite. I don't care if you haven't run in years, I promise there will be reasonable work-outs, good information, and a chance to hang out--even if we're too out of breath to actually talk!

Here's Ava stretching out with me after one of my last runs early last Spring--I must have known it was coming to an end when I made Ed take this shot!