Running, again.

This is the place I return to whenever I'm running.

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.

Run Like A Mother

I started writing this entry in May and saved it until I could add pictures and then just never came back. Whoops. I'm back for sure now because I need a place for my thoughts. Promise.


Well hello there blog I suppose you think I forgot about you. I didn't, I just forgot how to write.

I'm actually pretty glad I forgot about this thing for a while because when I went to update my "About Me" section it was really cool to see all of the things that had changed in just one year.  I have much to update you on but today I have returned with one specific post in mind, we can get to all of that catch up stuff at a later time. 



I'm going to brag about my Mom for a minute.

We did our first 5k yesterday (May 10, 2015) and she had no confidence in her ability to finish. I told her I could do it in 30 minutes and asked if she thought an hour was a reasonable expectation. She wasn't sure she could manage even that.

We lucked out and the weather was absolutely perfect, there was a slight chill in the air when we arrived but you could tell by the humidity that the cloud cover would eventually burn up and we would be in for some heat. Thankfully that didn't happen until we were lounging on my deck at home.

We elected to start near the back of the pack unsure of what to expect from this crowd. When the horn sounded there wasn't much hustle which I think helped her anxiety. I suspect she was worried everyone would take off like a shot and leave her in the dust, she didn't take into account who was in the crowd, there was no way that was going to be the case. As a mother's day race there was quite the variety of participants so I knew there was nothing to be worried about.

As we finally got underway we fell into a nice rhythm, a  combo of jogging and walking. This worked well for the first mile which had more hills than Mom had been expecting. During mile 2 she hit a bit of a road block her lack of confidence started to over take her, a points I was literally holding her hand up some hills. I cheered her on the entire way and even jogged backwards to give her something to focus on.

Even when she looked exhausted and told me she was done I kept cheering her on and she didn't give up. We were able to finish under her goal of 1 hour and clocked in at just under 45 minutes.

I am so freaking proud of her. She spent the rest of the day floating on cloud nine and told everyone we came in contact with that she finished a race earlier in the day.

Best Mother's Day ever.