Race-iversary

A few weeks ago, when I started my old political blog back up, I noticed in my archives that I did a blog posting when I began running back in 2008. It's very comical to look back on it now (especially writing that a 5K is 3.2 miles, haha), but what caught my mind was seeing that I was training for a race on November 27th, 2008, the inaugural Lansdowne Turkey Trot. Today marks the 4th anniversary (or, race-iversary, if you will) of that momentous (for me) occasion.

It has also caused me to look back on how far I've come as a runner in those 4 years. That first race, for example, I ran it in 30:47 (gun time, as the race was not chip timed), which, from what I have been told is not a bad time for your first 5K. The course was hilly, but it was in my neighborhood, so I had been running portions of that course for the 2 1/2 months preceding the race. It was at that moment that I began to think of myself as a runner, and the next day I went to the local running store to get properly fitted for a pair of running shoes.

34 races later, that 30:47 5K time has been replaced with a 25:04 5K time, an improvement of over 5 minutes in just 4 years. I've run fourteen 5K's, six 10K's, three 10 Milers, 5 Half-Marathons, and one full Marathon. That first 5K was simply a bucket list item, and it's morphed into something more substantial, 4 years of hard work, fitnress, and a love of running.

And I don't want to stop.

Post script to yesterday's blog post

My Twitter friend "Tai Fung" asked me yesterday what was it that spurred my son to want to participate in the Gingerbread Man Mile last week? So I went to the source, and asked him.

Was it because Daddy is a runner, and he wanted to be like me? Did he think that running a race would make me happy? Or was there some other underlying reason?

His answer was simple: he said, "I just thought it would be kinda cool to run a race."

Yeah, it is kinda cool.