Back in December, I was sitting at my computer in the middle of an incredibly long and busy work day at my organization’s 24,000-person conference in San Francisco when I somehow got involved in an email chain about signing up for the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler.

Even though I had a fairly successful bout with running once upon a time, there are two things I know for sure about myself:

1. I do not necessarily like running
2. I am a total wuss in the face of peer pressure

So when I got this incredibly menacing email, I wanted to respond Absolutely NOT.

Elizabeth had called me out, and I just can’t have that. So I stood up to her in my reply:

Just kidding — I caved to the pressure, registered for the lottery, and crossed all my fingers that I would not get a spot in the race. A few weeks later, as my luck would have it, I got in.

Thankfully, my pushy enthusiastic friends did too. And now here we are less than 8 weeks out from the race and I find myself trying to learn to like running again. I hit a pretty early speed bump (pun intended) with a little bit of a foot injury back in January, but I spent a few weeks icing, resting, and working back up to my normal pace.

This weekend I did 5 miles in 48 minutes and finally felt like I was back in my stride. I’m not really worried about whether my endurance can do 10 miles — If I can avoid boredom and/or injury and get outside for more runs, I feel like I’ll be in pretty good shape.

It also helps to have some good runner friends around for peer pressure motivation.