I don't know what it is about running that calls to me so deeply.
I've never been good at it, it always results in injuries and I certainly don't fit the physical appearance of a "runner". That doesn't matter to me though, I have always been deeply in love with and overly enthusiastic about running. To the point where I will sideline myself with injury over and over again because I cannot control my passion and do too much too soon.
This year I had a birthday, like I tend to do every year and it got me thinking that I needed to get smarter about fitness. I spent from November - April obsessively going to a spin studio until eventually I was taking 9 classes a week and surprise, surprise hurt myself.
I took it as a sign when I saw an advertisement on my facebook feed that a local running store was offering a once a week, early morning, back to running group that would go for 6 weeks and if you wanted you could sign up for a 5k at the end of it. So I signed up thinking that would be good for me.
It turns out that I was correct. The first meeting I ended up sprinting a bit too much and had some knee pain after. The trainers were great though. They quickly recognized my issues and started working with me on it. At some points someone would grab the back of my shirt and tell me to slow down and eventually it worked. I started to find my comfortable pace, something I wasn't sure I could ever do.
I completed the program and the following week was the 5k. Was it great? I can say now that it was but only because of how much I learned from it.
The mother's day race was the first one I'd ever done and I didn't consider that for real since I was working with mom the whole time.
So of course I started out WAY too fast, I was so nervous and excited and just trying to make it through the crowd. This also means that I started to burn out fast. On top of that I am a morning runner, not having taken into account that I was technically training for an evening race and therefore and did not have the energy stored for this especially since I was nervous all day. It was lucky for that that along my journey I picked up an absolute angel of a running buddy who was smart enough to start off the race not like a bat out of hell and caught up to me just as I was thinking I would lay down on the side of the road and cry for my failures.
I had wanted to run it in 28 but I was already there a bit before 3 miles according to the app screaming at me from my headphones, so I kicked it in high gear for the last bit because I come from a long line of stubborn German women and would not accept over 30 minutes for my finish time. I ended up with 29:39 and that was fine by me.
My runs since then have been much more successful with my new found knowledge and discipline so I'm implementing it in my training for my next race which will be a 10k in September. I have aspirations to run great distances and this time around I'm going to use my smarts to not let anything stop me.
So I'll be reporting back here because this running fool needs a place to talk about all things running without driving everyone in earshot raving mad.
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