Fall Marathon Training: Pick a Team

Wait, just wait: It'll all make sense in a minute why I chose this image!

Maybe I shouldn’t lead with this fact, but I am most definitely not a fan of the Twilight series. (Okay, so I’ve never read the books–which friends tell me are superior to the films–but after watching the first flick with our teen niece, I was peeved I’d wasted two hours of my life. Come on, admit it: You, too, kept waiting forthe family of vamps to break into mime during of first half of movie.) Yet because I am a voracious reader of Entertainment Weekly magazine, I keep up on all the latest Twilight pop culture. Despite not having any tweens or teens under my roof, I am well versed in the Team Edward (fans of the white-faced vampire) v. Team Jacob (those who drool over, I mean, root for the teen-turned-werewolf) rivalry.

What’s all this got to do with Run Like a Mother? I’m getting’ there… On one of my final East Coast RLAM tour stops, a woman asked me if readers ever tell Dimity or me that they like one of us better than the other. I laughed: While Dim and I have a, ahem, running joke that she’s “the cute one,” I’d never heard anyone say they favored one of us over the other. (Gee, at least not to my less-cute face!) Instead, I told the woman, many fans tell us they relate more to one of us than the other. I chuckle every time someone writes a comment on our Facebook wall like, “I’m so Dimity: I always curse my alarm clock and swat at the snooze button,” or, “I’m an SBS, always trying to set a PR.”

The woman’s inspired response: “You should make up tees that say, ‘Team Sarah’ or ‘Team Dimity.’” LOVE it!

While we haven’t gotten the silk screeners on the task yet, you can still choose sides. Yesterday Dimity posted the first four weeks of her beginner marathon training program. If you’ve been around the 26.2-block numerous times and have a weekly mileage base of roughly 35 miles, step up to my plan (also crafted by the wonderful Andrew Kastor, coach of the High Sierra Strides and an all-around awesome guy). We’ve dubbed it the Advanced Marathon Plan, largely in contrast to Dim’s plan. I followed the 12-week plan when I trained for Big Sur Marathon this April, and I’m going to follow it again for Portland Marathon, which is on the propitious date of 10/10/10.

Like cutie-pie, uh, I mean, Dimity, I’ll keep notes about my training in the plan. Unlike Dim, I’ve filled in all 12 weeks of the plan. That admission shouldn’t surprise you, given I’m the competitive one, right? Or, as Sarah Katz, a journalist who wrote a first-person account of the East Coast event wrote to me, “Though my running vibe is more along the Dimity lines, I appreciated your candid manner, honesty, and ability to take running seriously without taking yourself that way.”

Thanks, Sarah K., I think you just fittingly provided the motto for Team Sarah: “Take your running seriously, not yourself.”