I come from a family tradition of late-in-life runners. My dad ran his first marathon at age 40 and I didn't start running at all until age 25. I had always been a pretty active person--though mostly just with Denise Austin workout videos and step aerobics classes with the middle-aged ladies in my small town in High School. I was never interested in playing sports and I was rarely encouraged to do so because I wasn't particularly good. My brother was the jock and I was the reader. Funnily enough, he's the one who ended up fat, but he's thin again now, and we'll probably run a race together this year.
At age 25 I joined a gym for the first time and one day I got a little bored walking on the treadmill, so I started to run. Turns out that I liked it a lot more than I had in high school gym, then I promptly got a stress fracture in my left foot because I was wearing $5 Target "Fashion Sneakers" and might have been overly enthusiastic.
After that healed, I got some proper footwear, and my dad insisted that I run the Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon in January of 2007. I was so excited about a free trip to Disney World that I just sort of forgot about the whole running thing. I 'trained' for this race by running no more than five miles at a time, and it turns out that that wasn't a very good strategy. You can read about that experience here, but I will say that even though I hated most moments of that race and got incredibly sick afterward, I still wanted to do it again.
To date (Feb 2013), I have run 13 half marathons and a handful of other distance races. I now spend more money on running gear than I ever thought possible and have been actively pestering friends to sign up for races with me.
What's different about this blog versus other running blogs is that I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't really know how to train, or at least I don't train properly. I'm still not sure what a tempo run actually is, though I've gotten good at fartleks (heh, fart). You will not read my race times and think wow, I'll never run that fast, odds are good that you will run that fast, quite easily.
After my injury-plagued season in 2012, I'm determined to make 2013 the best racing year yet. I'm going to be smart about what I do, I'm actually going to cross-train and do things to make myself faster instead of just wondering why I'm not. But I'm also going to accept my limitations and have fun with it. That's the reason I do this, afterall.
What I hope to accomplish is writing this blog is to shine some light on a runner who is completely average. I don't do this to win, I don't do this to make anyone proud except myself and my life would probably be easier if I quit trying. But I won't. Running isn't about winning, it's about what the act of running does for each person who does it. I will never run 100+ miles a week; I will never be the best, but I will also never stop loving this.
At age 25 I joined a gym for the first time and one day I got a little bored walking on the treadmill, so I started to run. Turns out that I liked it a lot more than I had in high school gym, then I promptly got a stress fracture in my left foot because I was wearing $5 Target "Fashion Sneakers" and might have been overly enthusiastic.
After that healed, I got some proper footwear, and my dad insisted that I run the Walt Disney World 1/2 Marathon in January of 2007. I was so excited about a free trip to Disney World that I just sort of forgot about the whole running thing. I 'trained' for this race by running no more than five miles at a time, and it turns out that that wasn't a very good strategy. You can read about that experience here, but I will say that even though I hated most moments of that race and got incredibly sick afterward, I still wanted to do it again.
To date (Feb 2013), I have run 13 half marathons and a handful of other distance races. I now spend more money on running gear than I ever thought possible and have been actively pestering friends to sign up for races with me.
What's different about this blog versus other running blogs is that I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't really know how to train, or at least I don't train properly. I'm still not sure what a tempo run actually is, though I've gotten good at fartleks (heh, fart). You will not read my race times and think wow, I'll never run that fast, odds are good that you will run that fast, quite easily.
After my injury-plagued season in 2012, I'm determined to make 2013 the best racing year yet. I'm going to be smart about what I do, I'm actually going to cross-train and do things to make myself faster instead of just wondering why I'm not. But I'm also going to accept my limitations and have fun with it. That's the reason I do this, afterall.
What I hope to accomplish is writing this blog is to shine some light on a runner who is completely average. I don't do this to win, I don't do this to make anyone proud except myself and my life would probably be easier if I quit trying. But I won't. Running isn't about winning, it's about what the act of running does for each person who does it. I will never run 100+ miles a week; I will never be the best, but I will also never stop loving this.
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