So a couple of months ago, Eliana brought home a half-sheet from her school about a club called Girls On The Run. We signed her up and she has been meeting every Tuesday and Thursday to practice running with 3rd-5th grade girls after school. They are working towards completing a 5K later this month at Blue Lake. It seems like a really positive program.

A couple weeks ago she was getting pretty discouraged and wanted to quit. I let her skip a meeting, but I really want her to finish what she started. I think the missing key was that for the race she needs to have a “running buddy”—an adult to run with her. I asked her if she would want me to run with her. She got pretty excited and thought that was a great idea. Girl power!

The problem is, I am not really prepared at this moment to run a 5K. I’ve been using my Fitbit to log up to 10,000 steps a day for my health. That distance is about 5 miles, but the pace is much slower. My walks include picking dandelions with Ivy and stopping at the Bubble Tea store.

The good news is that there’s an app for nearly everything these days. I found a free Nike running app where you can ease yourself up to a 5K in four weeks. So, every day I’ve been adding a few little bursts of running with my walking. I won’t lie, it’s pretty rough to find out exactly how bad at running I had become.

Back in middle school, I used to run the 1500 meters and I was pretty decent at it. Fifth in regionals! But now, I weigh a lot more and I’m a lot less in shape. It’s horrific to find out that several parts of my body juggle. My first attempt at running lasted about half a block. Not wanting to disappoint my daughter, I have worked myself up to where I can jog all the way around our block without stopping. According to Google maps that’s about a .51 miles which is almost 1 kilometer. Now all I need to do is repeat that five times plus some change and I’m there. Wish me luck!