Thanks to my friends on ROTE (www.runningoftheears.com), I’ve been encouraged to start a blog of running. This is quite the feat for me as I’ve never been much of a writer…. Evidenced in the fact that it took me 6 years to write my thesis for my Masters Degree.
A (not so) brief
history of my running…
I’ve never been an athlete.
I ran track and played softball in 5th grade, and did the
forced PE classes in junior high and my first two years of high school, but
that’s it. I was one of those kids in
high school when I managed to get out of PE my junior and senior years of high
school by taking multiple music classes each semester.
My family history is that of weight gain starting in the
late 20s to early 30s. When I entered
the real world of a job and bought my house, I realized that I would quickly
head in that direction if I didn’t find some way to work off all the yummy
goodness I was consuming between breakfast from the work café, lunches out and
dinners on my own. I first laced up my
running shoes in the early part of 2006 and ran my first 5k in March of that
year, one put on by the local running store, Toolen’s Running Start. Despite it being cold and wet that day, I
loved it and was hooked. By the end of
April 2006, I had run another 5k, a 5-mile and a half marathon.
That summer, I met the man I now am happy to call my
husband. It started with a 5-week road
series in Forest Park. The last week, a
girl I was talking to was trying to set me up with a friend of hers, which was
overheard by another guy, who announced that Greg was single (as Greg ran by
trying to catch up with a group for dinner).
And just that fast, he was gone.
Little did I know I’d see him again soon. The following weekend, I drove
up to Edwardsville for a 5k and guess who showed up? Yup, Greg!!
Enjoying the view of him warming up in the parking lot, I did the same…
guess I got too distracted because I ended up locking my keys in my car. Oops!
So now I needed to borrow someone’s phone to call my parents to get keys
delivered. Ended up asking Greg, and
well, the rest is history.
Within a few weeks, I was convinced to sign up for my first
marathon – and what better place to do it than at my childhood vacation spot,
Walt Disney World. It didn’t take much
convincing to get Greg to join in the fun.
Wow – did I not know what I was getting in to.
It’s not particularly evident in the story above, but I was
never much for following a training plan.
The running, for some reason, just came easy to me. My first 5k was 30-or so minutes. My second was 28 minutes. The two half marathons I completed in 2:06
and 2:16. Not too shabby for long runs
of no more than 7 miles. Unfortunately,
this proved a bad habit for marathon training.
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