This wasn’t so bad. Eva was clearly holding back, but Angela couldn’t go any faster. Still, she was holding her own. She was doing this. Her goal was to walk the ultra-marathon and finish, but maybe with six months of training she could actually run some of it.
Then the slow burn in her side began. Her legs shook; her lungs constricted. Angela tried to remember running advice from her sports days—breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth—and ignore the ache spreading through her whole body.
The lower part of the sleeve on her oversized T-shirt rubbed. Oy. How many times had she become raw under her arms and between her thighs when running in high school? The unpleasant parts of the sport flooded back to her. The blisters. The chafing. The black toenails—although her coach had always said losing a toenail was a badge of honor, the sign a runner had persevered.
But right now all of that sounded painful and purposeless. How had she ever actually enjoyed this?
How much longer? Angela glanced at her watch and saw 16:24 glaring back at her. Seriously? It felt as though they’d been going for hours, not sixteen minutes, and according to her GPS, they’d only jogged a little more than a mile.
One. Stinking. Mile.
And in six months’ time she had to somehow walk or run 155?
Angela slowed to a walk, holding the stitch in her side that could no longer be ignored.
Eva stopped. “You okay?”
“Just a little pain I’ve got to work out. Maybe I started too quickly. Need to warm up more.” How embarrassing for Eva to know just how pathetic Angela was.
“Should we stop?”
Yes. That’s what Angela wanted to say. But if she quit after the first day of training, how could she face her children—especially Kylee, who had thrown her arms around Angela in a triumphant hug after she’d announced her intentions to run the ultra?
“No.” She wouldn’t stop. But she did need to do this at her own pace. “I’ll be fine. Why don’t you go on ahead, though? I’ll catch up soon.” She infused her voice with as much assurance as possible.
Her tone clearly didn’t convince Eva, but her sister-in-law shrugged and started running ahead.
One foot in front of the other. That’s how Angela was going to accomplish this.
She inhaled and started jogging again.
9
Yoga did not solve all problems, but Eva hoped this time it would.
She desperately needed a temporary reprieve from the discouragement and irritation warring for prominence in her heart, not to mention the stretch her body craved after nearly three weeks of training for the ultra-marathon.
Her shoes crunched orange and yellow leaves that had fallen to the ground as she approached the front door of No Frills Fitness’s Broadway location. She entered and, instead of the smell of sweat and stinky shoes, a sweet rush of eucalyptus and lavender essential oils greeted her. Beyoncé sang from somewhere above, an upbeat tune about making sure your man treated you right, that was interrupted occasionally by the clanging of weights and underscored by the whir of machines and chatter from the smattering of patrons here for a midday Friday workout.
The college student behind the receptionist’s desk smiled. “Hey, Eva. You here for class?” She eyed the yoga mat stashed under Eva’s arm.
“I sure am, Tonya.”
“Awesome. It’s taught by a probationary instructor.”
“Yeah, Marc asked me to come try her out to see whether we should hire her permanently.” It was a small way Eva could help out here. And now that she’d cut back her hours at the heart center to spend more time training, she was a bit more available.
She’d hoped to have more joint training sessions with Angela built into her schedule but . . .
No. Dwelling on the negative did no good. She needed to sweat out the toxins trying to overtake her since training had begun.
Eva walked to the yoga room and peeked inside. A petite redhead chatted with a few gym regulars at the front of the class. No Marc. He was supposed to join her if he could, but maybe something had come up.
Classes always filled quickly, so Eva rolled out her mat, then slid off her coat and hung it on a peg in the back of the room. This wasn’t a hot yoga class, but the room still felt warm compared with the sixty-degree weather outside.
As she peeled off her shoes and socks, Eva couldn’t help grimacing. Blisters had recently formed on the back of