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Running the Marathon:
A task not unlike volunteering in the Peace Corps
By Kendra Miller, Mak-8, Delcevo
Good habits beget
more good habits!
The following article is
about my journey, inspired by other journeys.
It is also to help those of
you who are interested
learn from my successes
and failures.
When I moved to site,
let's face it, I had gained
a few pounds and I was
not looking forward to
showing them off in the
spring. In addition, I felt
that I really didn't have a
good way to motivate
myself to maintain a
yoga routine in my own
living room. Good habits
beget more good habits!
I was at a point of desperation. While on my
site visit to Delcevo in
November 2003, I met
Justin, the Mak-7 who
would be my site mate.
He was tall, he was only
drinking water, and he
was running a marathon
in two days. He left the
next day for Athens to
run the 26.2 miles of
glory.
I talked to him about it
after he was done. I listened to his stories and
decided to try for myself. I had had some experience with running,
having run a halfmarathon the year before. I felt it was impossible but it was so attractive and the timing was
right. The Athens Classic Marathon is always
the first Sunday in November. That's positioned just so that you
can only do it once during your service. If you
don't already know,
training is usually
around a 4- to 5-month
process and you should
be starting from a base
of 3 to 6 comfortable
miles three to four times
a week. No time like the
present to begin running.
However, I didn't really
start running until latespring.
The training
It was tough. It was
long. It was obsessing.
The first official week of
training was the last
week of June. I took my
training schedule off the
internet:
www.halhigdon.com. He
has a great novice training schedule (although
more difficult than
some) to prepare you for
finishing a marathon. He
also has many tips. The
more you read, the more
mentally prepared you
will be (at least that's
how I felt).
The first couple of
weeks, I was doing all
the runs and feeling
great about the ease of
the program; however, I
couldn't help but look a
few weeks ahead to distances that would surely
kill me (10 miles, 15
miles, 20 miles).
I found it enormously
useful to have a training
partner during this essential habit-forming
first month. I'm sure you
don't all have a fiancee
who will come to train
with you, but you can
count on site-mates,
other volunteers who
will be training as well,
or just a few friends who
want to get into shape.
You'd be surprised how
many Macedonian
friends you have who
would like to learn the
"ins and outs" of running
from someone with experience. I actually ran
quite a few times with
some friends here in
Delcevo.
About mid training you
begin to lose hope in
keeping up. You lose
your ambition, your motivation and you ask
yourself "why did I join
the Peace Corps anyway... I mean... why did
I make the commitment
to run a marathon anyway?!?" Believe me,
you'll cry (if you're that
kind of person), you'll
yell (regardless if you're