A great way to start

Indra

Alright, so today on the way home from school I was like "I am going to go for a ride when I get home." When I got home I finished my homework then decided to go on a run instead. I got dressed(In all pink mind you) and headed out to the barn. I think Erin and I have now proved that horses are great companions and transportation :-) I spent about five minutes catching Allegro then headed of at a good paced jog down the driveway. Allegro was trotting beside me and I was listening to an awesome song! I headed out of the driveway and crossed the road. The dogs had gotten distracted by something and had wondered off into the fields...A few minutes later they were running beside me. I didn't stop the whole run and after a mile- my stopping point I could barely breath I had been running so hard. Arriving home a little while later my pony jogging next to me, I knew it was the right decision to go on the run instead of the ride. in the beginning my plan had been to run the first mile then ride back home for the second mile. All in all I am very happy that I didn't choose to ride home, and ran the whole way. I feel great now and about two minutes after I finished the run I was feeling normal. This was a great first independent run and I plan to do one or two more in the upcoming week.

found my good time

What a great race yesterday. It was a glorious selfish day to myself and i fully appreciated it. The beach was sandy with just a little snow, the crowd was huge and the sun was shining. I had no idea that there were fancy parts of Hampton Beach. The mansions were palatial in size and the grounds were quite like those of manors. I really had no idea. I thought Hampton Beach was all leopard print and half shirts. The run was really lovely. There were 3 other barefoot runners in the crowd, all men but 3 others none the less.

I met so many women and watched so many of them kick asphalt! It was so inspiring and it was certainly good timing for my morale with the olympics in full swing. I used a few key words in the last few miles of the race. I borrowed Leslie's COURAGE, and my STRENGTH, and POWER. I seemed to really have needed them from miles 10 to 13. It just goes to show again and again that training isn't really that necessary. I think i will train for my next race and see if i can really kick it into gear. Do any of you have any training vs non training stories you would like to share? Let me know...and get out there and play and feel proud of yourself.

Larch Hill Race

She did it! Indra and i ran our first race together on Halloween morning. It was warm and misty and a rather perfect day to be romping around on the Larch Hill property in true steeplechase fashion. There was plenty of mud to had. The costumes were excellent and the company could not have been better. Indra paced herself well and we chatted and ran for the first mile after that she got a bit more quiet and quite frankly she was a bit hot. Come mile three she was definitely parched and over dressed for the run, but she persevered and was rewarded with a great big cup of water at the end. There was plenty of food and fun to be had after the race. Indra went on to work at her school carnival for the rest of the morning and i think felt a great sense of accomplishment. I will let her tell her story later.

Unfortunately right now Indra has a rather enormous infection in her foot that we are all baffled by. She is lying in bed fighting a bit of a fever and trying to stay home and off of IV antibiotics. Let's hope she can do it.

motivate motivate

It has been hard to motivate for the past 2 days. Between work and procrastination, cold weather and general ennui we have managed not to run. Indra is running in pe today so i guess i will run as well. I have potatoes to dig and some presents to wrap up and general house cleaning along with real work and paper work...Sound familiar?

What i think will inspire me is writing about my annual birthday day of running. This year my good friend and superb running buddy, Leslie, gave me a fabulous and much desired birthday gift...a complaint free running partner for the day. Every year for my birthday i go on as many wooded runs in one day as i can fit in and my slightly arthritic dogs can handle. This year the number was 6. Leslie came over in morning and we got ready for our day of fun and running. We drove up to a beautiful state park around us and ran to the top of Spruce hill. You can see 365 degrees from the top of it. North Adams, Greylock, beauty and hills. It was lovely. We then moved onto a place called Tannery Falls within the same park. This was a lovely and short run complete with a fantastic waterfall in the middle of the run. In the summer the waterfall is so loud it is hard to hear someone speak when you are standing near. We then moved away from Savoy and into the Berkshires. In Dalton we ran and explored the Waconah Falls area. Again a small but lovely little run, again with some waterfall action. After that we moved on to Kennedy Park, a very cool running and cross country ski area in Lenox. Much fun was had there trampling through the woods trying to figure out where we were and if we cared. Next we drove to Stockbridge and ran up Monument Mountain. A totally beautiful place and a great hike for the family if you are ever out there. The views from the top are gorgeous year round. We finished with our final run at The Ice Glen in Stockbridge. Quaint pretty and fun. We got a little turned around at the end of the ice glen area and had to bush wack through some ones multi million dollar estate complete with gate and stone wall which we had to climb over. Our final stop was the Stockbridge elderly outpost of The Red Lion Inn. A must do is a beer on the porch watching people take pictures of each other in front of the ridiculously large pumpkins. We couldn't resist, we had to do it too.

After all of that running fun my dog was exhausted and i was hungry for dinner with my wonderful family. What a great birthday. Thank you Leslie and thank you my spectacular family for making it possible for me to have so much fun and good times.

and so we begin

My daughter and i have decided to start this blog as part of a resolution to run a marathon together. The idea came about after i finished the Hartford Marathon. We want to spend time together. Be powerful, have fun, and to put it simply...we want to run like girls.

TANYA:First let me tell you about my girl. She is 11 years old, smart, funny, spunky, and very strong. She is an athlete but running is fairly new to her. Indra rides horses and plays like a girl. And just to make it clear that means she kicks butt! I am going to let her tell you about me.

INDRA:My mom Tanya is 36 and just ran the Hartford marathon. She is fun, funny, talkative and like me, she likes to play like a girl! Tanya loves to run and has running since she was 12 years old. We both love animals and one of our dog's favorite things to do is to go for a nice long run.

TANYA AND INDRA: We would like to encourage any mom and daughter teams out there to join us and run like girls. It is a great time to play together and talk and be outside.

We started today with our first fun run. Indra is hoping to run a 3 mile race in about 2 weeks. We set the pace at comfortable and got a feeling for how long running a mile together would take. It was cold today and windy. We ran the first 1/2 mile downhill and the second up. We calculated that the race should take Indra about a half hour and still be fun.