Saturday, January 12, 2013

New Year's Resolution? Plan? Idea? Experiment?

Not sure what this is except something I wanted to start in the new year and see if I can do it for a year. I came up with an idea a few years ago that I wanted to start running again. I ran track in high school (sprinter/hurdler) and was pretty decent at it.  But since college basically I have not done any type of running or regular exercise.  I may look in shape because I am skinny but I am actually in very poor shape compared to what I once was.  But back to my main story....The idea I had a few years ago was to start a running program on January 1st and attempt to keep it going for a year.  During the year I wanted to run at least one 5k race a month and see how my time improved over the year.  My main goal is to get to where I can run a 5k in under 20 minutes or faster.  I want to see just how fast I can get.  I had been thinking about this for 2-3 years but had never done it mostly because we have had new babies the past couple years.  This year I finally made up my mind to go for it.  I am getting older (32) and will be past my "prime" soon so I figured I better do it before it is too late.
So, I started running January 1st. In the cold weather.  I had not ran of any consequence in probably 10 years and have not exercised regularly in that time either.  It was a slight shock to the system to say the least.  Fast forward 12 days and today was my first 5k race (not only for the year but ever).  I know you are probably supposed to train for longer than that but for my experiment I need to run one in January and there happened to be one in Rogers today.  My grandiose goal was to run a 25 minute 5k for my first one,  my realistic goal was to run under 28 minutes,  and my easy goal was to finish without stopping to walk.  In my 12 days of training I had yet to run 5k without stopping to walk.
So, today I ran in the Tux on the Run 5K which was raising money for the YMCA in Rogers.  I think there where about 150 or so runners.  I am happy to report that I finished without stopping to walk and I finished with a time of 26:27.  I am pretty happy with it but I have a ways to go to get to where I want to be.  It was fun to run in a race though.  Although I did get beat by like a 16 year old and a 60 year old.  Half way through the race I got passed by a guy pushing a toddler in a jogging stroller.  It was very demoralizing at the time and I told myself at that time that my new goal for the race was to not get beat by anyone pushing a stroller.  I ended up meeting this goal also and passed him with about 1/4 mile left.

Here I am after the race with my awesome windblown hair.