My First Race

So it wasn't too far back that I decided to start seriously running to get in shape. Plus, I've always wanted to say I ran a marathon. I did a lot of research and to even start training for 16 weeks for the marathon you have to be able to run for 30 min. several times a week without stopping. Now I had my starting point. When I first did 30 minutes I'm sure I only did about 1 1/2 miles, but by the end I was averaging about 3. Like Tia Chapman said, "it's amazing what your body can do with the proper training." Maybe I will be able to stretch my body for a 10K or even a half marathon, but I'm pretty confident that the full 26.2 miles is out of the question. No matter what I decide I need to be more disciplined about the training. Here are a few pictures of my first official run. The 5K runners- before we ran.

All of us from the neighborhood-before.

We are almost done, it was right after this I started feeling sick.

All of us after the run- do we look a little exhausted?

We (Kattie, Liz, Tia, and I) did the Wasatch Womans Wellness Challenge. There were about 300 running the 5K and 300 running the 10K. Just to justify my time, which turned out to be slower then when we ran around the neighborhood, I'm going to tell you a few things that "might" have been a factor. :)

We were at the beginning of the group and suddenly we looked back and everyone was yelling at us to "GO". I guess we didn't hear the countdown and there wasn't a gunshot to start. I'm assuming they had already started the timer before the three of us even started running. Then we hadn't even run that far before we came to a "T" in the path and we weren't sure which way to run, left or right, so all the runners just stopped. Finally, we were told to go "left". It was probably only about 20 seconds of confusion, but it all adds up in the end. Then last, but not least, we weren't prepared for this enormous hill that we had to run up. We had ran up hills in our neighborhood, but what helped me get through those was gaining speed going down. This hill on the U of U campus never went down. When we peaked it just flattened out. We never got the momentum back of getting to run downhill. Plus, it seemed like it was a good 1/4 of a mile straight up. It was a killer.

I am a little down about my time, but I was so exhilirated from finishing a goal. For example, I have a bunch of little goals like "get caught up with scrapbooking", "read my scriptures daily", "keep a better journal", but none of these are something I can actually finish, they are constantly on-going. I realized this after the race. This run was something I actually finished and it did end. Yes, I can always do another one, but each race is a new goal, a new challenge, and it has a finishing point. Does this make sense? Realistically, my other goals can never be finished. But for this one, I can cross it off my list, with pride.