I, the runner

It all started with one 5k race.

Despite playing many sports as a youngster, I was not an athletic kid.  With some gentle nudging from my parents, I participated in rec league soccer, basketball, and baseball, but I was the kid standing in right field, spending most of my time swatting at gnats and (undeservedly) winning the 'most improved' award at the end of the season.  In high school, I was the captain of the debate team, and I did quite a few events in the Science Olympiad, but I did not play sports.  A pickup game of basketball or soccer with friends perhaps, but I was more or less guaranteed to be one of the last people picked when in came down to dividing up the teams.

Running was something that I began aspired to once I moved on to college and realized that to have the kind of body that I wanted and do the sorts of things I wanted to do was something completely under my own control.  I put together a bucket list, running a marathon was right up at the top of the list, above such other equally unachievable as climbing one of the world's tallest mountains or taking a 500 mile voyage by kayak.  It didn't seem like something that could happen for me without years of rigorous preparation, so it sat far on the back burner on my brain when I occasionally made it out to the gym to plod a mile or two around the rubberized track after lifting a few weights.  I spent years running on and off, probably never exceeding more than 5-10 miles per month, taking months off at a time, and never surpassing 2 or 3 miles at a go.

Fast forward 3 years: I've been in the Peace Corps, bounced back and forth between West Africa and Atlanta a few times, and gotten married.  It was Fall 2011, Christina and I were in Atlanta (her first time living here), trying to find gainful employment, make friends, and deal with the reverse culture shock.  We were stressed, and looking for an outlet, and Christina, who was also an aspiring runner, suggested we sign up for a 5k race.  It was a completely novel idea to me, but it seemed like a good way to help build and sustain the motivation, and it gave us a great excuse to go running together, so we went for it.  We picked a Christmas race in our neighborhood, and we started to prep.

For the first time in my life, I demonstrated some athletic consistency.  For that period of a few months, I must have averaged 3 or more runs per week, and started to nudge up the distance.  We trained together, we made it to the race, and we finished our 5k, in a whopping 32 minutes.

It wasn't an impressive time by any measure, but the process helped click something into place in my brain - it proved to me that having a dedicated, motivated running partner to train with and a goal to aim for, I could work and become better.  So I tried it again.

That's me in the yellow socks! Action Dash 5k (my current PR), 9/12

Five months later, we ran a second 5k, and I knocked 8 minutes off my old time.  A month after that, we ran our first 10k.  Four months later, we ran our first half marathon.  Five months after that (3 months ago), I finished my first marathon.  The more I run, the farther and faster I want to go!

And that's how I wound up in this current mental state.  During this running escalation, Christina also helped to nurture my new passion with running books - the seminal Born to Run by Chris McDougall, and Eat and Run by Scott Jurek, both of which tell epic tales of awesome athletes running incredible long distance races.  And as I run more and get stronger and stronger, this has become my wildly ambitious long term goal - I want to race 100 mile trail races.

I am an ultra running wannabe.  And it all started with a 5k race.