Running Away

June 15, 2010

Several months ago, I decided to try something new. Noticing a bit of pudginess increasing in myself, I decided to run a 5K. I had also decided to visit a dear friend of mine in Illinois, so to be efficient, I combined the two goals and signed up to run in Christie Clinic Illinois 5K (which was actually just a tag on to the big event, the marathon).

I spent two months training, similar to the couch to 5k program, starting from a terrible place of running/walking about 1.8 miles in about 20 minutes to finishing a full 5k in just under 33 minutes. My time for the actual race was just a bit longer than my best training time.

This race was huge! We started so far back, that we could barely see the start line, but our timing was kept by a nifty little chip that was put in our shoes.

All in all, my time was terrible, but I did make my goal of completing the whole race without walking! I ran with two good friends, sisters from my sorority. (Both beat me, by about a minute or so).

Go Kate, Go! I may or may not have purposefully left out the photo of me rounding this same corner. The last part of the race was running through the stadium as you can see above and by this point, both Leanne and Kate had pulled ahead. I was not happy about lagging behind, I was hot and I was tired but as I made it around that first corner in the stadium, I hear someone  call out my name. Since I knew no one in IL, I was a bit surprised and encouraged as I looked up and saw Kate’s boyfriend, Alex (to whom I had bequeathed my camera to get action shots) cheering me on. Thanks, Alex, that really meant a lot!  Silly, I know, but I needed that cheer.

My running since the race has been sporadic at best, but I hope to keep it up on some level. Now that I have gotten to a point where I can run (slowly) for a half an hour, it is time to work on getting my heartrate better, on speed, on improving my form, and hopefully I will lose some weight in the process.
All in all, I could have done better, but hey, I am making progress!

Too bad I can’t get a medal every time I run. :0)

Tags: Friends, IL, Running, travel