Training...

        So, I have been "wanting" to work out and be active for oh, the last year and a half. But with life and a baby and such, it just hasn't seemed to happen. Funny thing is, as soon as we committed ourselves to this half marathon on New Year's Day, I started running. There really is nothing that will make you stick to a training plan like having 13 miles looming over your head only 9 weeks away and having absolutely no idea how you are possibly going to accomplish it.
          I'm not sure if we picked the best or worst week to start running in Haiti, since this last week saw 4 days of non-stop rain due to the tropical storm. The "best" part of this is it was amazingly cool here. The "worst" part of this is, well, who wants to go run in the rain and mud. However, like I said, with 13 miles looming over your head, there's just not any making excuses.
         Our first day running didn't exactly go so well. It actually wasn't the running that was so bad. Three miles was a little easier than we expected after being lazy bums for so stinking long. However, since we have a baby Jimmy and I obviously can't go out and run together unless one of us is crazy enough to add the difficulty of carry an extra 25 pounds to this already seemingly impossible task. Turns out, neither of us is that crazy. (Sadly, strollers are not really an option in Haiti) We had driven out to this field to run, and so I stayed in the truck with Abigail while Jimmy ran, and then he was going to stay with her while I ran....except we never made it that far. While Jimmy was handing over his shoes and watch for me to get ready to run, Abigail decided to take a nose dive out of the front seat of the truck.... Thankfully Jimmy saw and caught her when her face was about an inch away from the pavement. Sadly, she had already hit her head and scraped her face on the metal bar for stepping into the truck. By the time I had any idea something had happened, he had already caught her. Although it could have been worse, it was a pretty bad fall. One of those where she couldn't scream for about 30 seconds, but then once she did she screamed loud and hard for a long time (when she wasn't trying to fall asleep that is). One of those where her forehead grew about 3 inches immediately. So, instead of making Jimmy deal with a screaming baby alone while I took my turn running, we decided to head home. (Don't worry, I made up the distance the next day). Although the first hour was a little scary, Abigail was fine. We figure that a baby's first injury has to happen sometime, and after a first run like that subsequent runs can only get better right? At least they only involve pain to ourselves and not our daughter.
          I ran 5 miles last night. I know this is lame, but I actually don't know if I've ever run 5 miles (at least on purpose) before. Actually I only hope that I ran 5 miles last night - I ran for an hour anyways and according to my estimation of distance I think it was about 5 miles. Since we don't have a track to run on, one thing we're both a little afraid of is that we will get to the end of our training and think that we are able to run 13 miles, and get back to the States only to find out that we are super slow runners and we're still not even close to running far enough. :o)
         One really awesome result of our first run is that a couple days later I was drinking out of my water bottle at school and thinking, man this water tastes really nasty! I drank several times before I decided I could not drink such nasty water anymore. And that's when I remembered.... On the way home from running when by daughter had a head injury and was screaming and I had no ice..... I had pulled off my sock and stuck it in the cold water in my water bottle to put on her head. I had done that several times. Then my water bottle had sat at my house for a couple days unused, and I had forgotten all about it.Until that morning I had seen a full water bottle and rather than dumping it out had simply added ice to the water that had been growing my foot grime for 2 days. THAT's why my water tasted nasty! Sick out!
        So that's the beginning of our training. The cool weather is now gone, so we are sweating buckets whenever we run. 13 miles still seems really far away, but we're just gunna take it one step at a time. If Barry can run 315 miles, surely we can do 13. And if the Haitian women can endure the difficulties they do every single day, well then there's no question - we can do this thing.
        If you haven't done it yet, check out the Run For Life website: http://runforlifehaiti.org/
And if you want to contribute to the good cause of me and Jimmy's pain - I mean, to our attempt to help raise money for the women of Haiti, you can support our run at http://www.razoo.com/story/Jimmy-And-Becky-Burton-Fundraising-For-Run-For-Life-Haiti-Join-The-Team?referral_code=share

Until Next time,
Mamma turned Runner for God's glory

Oh yeah, here's a picture the next day. (We can't display the photo from the night of the inury)