I’m still not sure what I was thinking when I told my wife that I’d run the Bentonville Half Marathon with her in 2012. I’m not a runner and I’ve hated running ever since the brutal distance runs during my athletic days of my youth. But, I said I’d run with her, so I’m running.
I determined that my best plan would be to run some 5k races and slowly get my self prepared for a half marathon. I started running 3-4 miles a week about two months ago and rarely made it beyond 1.5 miles before I felt like croaking. Basically, I would run to the edge of death and then go home or get off the treadmill and lay on the floor for much longer than I ran.
My pace never really improved over the weeks but the length of the run did. About two weeks ago I decided to run the route of my first 5k and see what I could do. It took a 100% unacceptable 36 minutes and 47 seconds. My goal for the race was 30 minutes and there was no way that a terrible runner like me could shave nearly 7 minutes off in such a short period of time.
I kept doing my short runs and added a couple of new goals that felt more attainable; finish and don’t get beat by someone running the 10k. I’m happy to report that I met all of my goals; I finished in 29:04 and beat the first 10k finisher by nearly eight minutes.
I still don’t like running but I’m going to keep at it and intend on completing the half marathon early next year.
I LOVE this, Travis!!! You guys are going to rock it! We should get a group together from GPC to hit up the Bentonville Half next spring.
We would have a suh-weet, super cool running group!