Kick-off!

Bang! Was that the starting gun? Yes it was ladies and gentlemen and it was signaling the start of training! I dragged myself out of bed at 7am on Saturday and to The Wellesley Community Center (picture right), our training headquarters, for the Team In Training Kick-off party and first group training run of the season.

At the party, my weekend breakfast staple and our sponsor, Dunkin Donuts, treated us to some coffee and bagels as we were introduced to the Team In Training program and the people supporting us over the next four months. Jillian, the Campaign Coordinator announced that even before we had run our first training run, the Massachusetts chapter had raised over $109K! Over 10% of the way to our $1 million goal! Along with that announcement, she recognized the top 6 fundraisers to date who had already raised from $2K to $18K. We also heard from two of our inspired heroes who were both cancer survivors, one of whom was first diagnosed at age 6 and proudly bragged about recently getting her learner's permit. By the end of all these's speeches, I was shocked, inspired, and a little tiny bit shamed into committing to stop procrastinating and get fundraising!

Finally, our coaches, Kelly and Sarad came up to the stage to introduce themselves and get training started. Sarad really got to the heart of how we will probably all feel about our coaches by the end of training by leading off with, "Someone came up to Kelly earlier and asked if they could call her 'Mom.' So feel free to consider Kelly 'Mom' and me 'Dad.'" Already I'm thinking this is going to be a fun and interesting season and if my 18+ mile runs go the way I think they will, I may even end up calling them Mom, Dad, or whatever else is in my delusional mind at that point. Kelly and Sarad went over some basic training rules the most unfortunate of which is that we are not allowed to run with iPods. We're not allowed to listen to music during the marathon so we have to get use to running long distances without them now. That leaves a

lot of time for bonding with our teammates during runs. Will there be close heart-to-hearts? Heated fights? Awkward revelations? Only time will tell...

Finally, we took off on our first training run, going 1.5 miles out towards Hopkinton (the beginning of the race) and back right on the actual marathon route (picture left). The run went really well as it is shorter than most of the long runs I've been doing. I left Kick-off feeling really excited about our group runs and the entire program in general. For now I've got a very optimistic view of the entire journey and I can't wait to dive right it!