Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

– Meister Eckhart

Training day one is done. Dwayne and I are training for a half-marathon, perhaps the Cowtown in March. We signed up with the Jeff Galloway group in Fort Worth and had our first run with them on Saturday. The Jeff Galloway group is relatively small, so they have partnered with a larger running and walking group that has run together every Saturday for the last 20 years. And if that isn’t wow enough, the leader of this group is in his eighties! There were about 22 people altogether at 7 am on Saturday. It was chilly, but once we started moving, it didn’t feel so cold. The big group had a 7 to 9-mile run planned, but our smaller group turned around at the 2.5-mile mark for a total of 5 miles. We ran along the Trinity River, and it is just beautiful. There are two paths that run parallel to one another between the river and the railroad track.

If you aren’t familiar with the Jeff Galloway Method, it is a Walk-Run-Walk method. The Method uses an interval timer, and depending on your goals and abilities, you set your intervals accordingly. We started with 60-second run and 30-second walks but moved it to 30 and 30. I haven’t seen the full training plan yet, and I’m not quite sure what the plane is for the rest of the week, but both Dwayne and I were pleased with how the Method worked. Next week I’ll be going it alone as Dwayne is not able to make it with me.