First, a little history
Before I start posting race reports, many of you (since I'm sure there are "many" of you out there reading this) may wonder why I started running. So I'll start in the beginning....
My memories of running in my younger years were not fond ones. My nickname in kindergarten was "Putt-putt" because I was so slow. I dreaded the mile runs for the presidential fitness test. The only one I remember was during my one year in high school, I completed the mile in a lazy 14:08. A friend of mine, Amy, competed in cross country in high school, which completely baffled me. Who would run for fun, for sport? I would be the one eating crappy food for lunch because it made me happy, while she ate fairly healthy (for a high schooler) because she said she didn't want to go through life fat.
My own desire not to go through life fat hit about 4 years ago, and I have since lost 50 pounds. But I didn't really start running until around 3 years ago. My friend Kelly and I used to be so excited about running 4 minutes straight, then 6, then - a whole mile! I started running outside, both on my own and with a coworker who braved snakes with me on trails near the South Platte river once a week. The farthest we ever went was about 5 miles at a leisurely pace.
Even though I started to enjoy running, I still didn't stick with it very well. I'd go to the gym every day for two weeks, then not go for a month. It's hard to stay in good running condition like that! Then I injured my ankle in flag football last fall and didn't run again for almost 4 months. Surprisingly, I picked it up again pretty easily.
Around that time, my friend Stef decided she wanted to run the 30th Bolder Boulder for her 30th birthday. She's walked in it almost every year since the beginning but finally wanted to run it all. I had a lot of stress in my life when she told me that, and since running has always been a fairly good stress reliever for me, I agreed to do it with her and even try to do a half-marathon later in the year. So as part of our training, we are running races every weekend, sometimes twice a weekend. I had only run two 5K's before, both last summer, and both in more than 30 minutes.
Our first 5K of the year was the Highlands Ranch St. Paddy's Day 5K. My goal was less than 30 minutes - and I did it, completing in 29:36! We got an awesome long sleeved shirt that day that I've worn in every race since. Our next race was really more of a baseline training run in Boulder, a 4-miler where they also take your mile splits. Since I had been on vacation and hadn't run since the previous week's 5K, my goal was less than 45 minutes. I surprised myself, completing in 37:50! My fastest mile was the first one at 9:13, and my slowest was the third mile at 9:53. I blame that on stopping at a water station.
Last weekend we signed up for a 5K in downtown Denver, which afterwards made us realize we should think about which races we are signing up for instead of just doing it to run. This one, which I suppose is a good cause but not one I'm really passionate about, was called the Human Rights Torch Relay. Sure, I'm all for human rights. But this was really protesting the Olympics in China. According to Paige, who we ended up run/walking with, this race was rather large in other cities, but in Denver only about 30 people showed up. Stef, Paige, and I stayed together and we finished in about 46 minutes. Stef and I were going to do a 4-mile race hosted by the Rocky Mountain Road Runners the next day in the same location, but she came down with a cold and stomach ache, so we rested.
So there is my history as of yesterday with running. I will post today's race report in a new post....
My memories of running in my younger years were not fond ones. My nickname in kindergarten was "Putt-putt" because I was so slow. I dreaded the mile runs for the presidential fitness test. The only one I remember was during my one year in high school, I completed the mile in a lazy 14:08. A friend of mine, Amy, competed in cross country in high school, which completely baffled me. Who would run for fun, for sport? I would be the one eating crappy food for lunch because it made me happy, while she ate fairly healthy (for a high schooler) because she said she didn't want to go through life fat.
My own desire not to go through life fat hit about 4 years ago, and I have since lost 50 pounds. But I didn't really start running until around 3 years ago. My friend Kelly and I used to be so excited about running 4 minutes straight, then 6, then - a whole mile! I started running outside, both on my own and with a coworker who braved snakes with me on trails near the South Platte river once a week. The farthest we ever went was about 5 miles at a leisurely pace.
Even though I started to enjoy running, I still didn't stick with it very well. I'd go to the gym every day for two weeks, then not go for a month. It's hard to stay in good running condition like that! Then I injured my ankle in flag football last fall and didn't run again for almost 4 months. Surprisingly, I picked it up again pretty easily.
Around that time, my friend Stef decided she wanted to run the 30th Bolder Boulder for her 30th birthday. She's walked in it almost every year since the beginning but finally wanted to run it all. I had a lot of stress in my life when she told me that, and since running has always been a fairly good stress reliever for me, I agreed to do it with her and even try to do a half-marathon later in the year. So as part of our training, we are running races every weekend, sometimes twice a weekend. I had only run two 5K's before, both last summer, and both in more than 30 minutes.
Our first 5K of the year was the Highlands Ranch St. Paddy's Day 5K. My goal was less than 30 minutes - and I did it, completing in 29:36! We got an awesome long sleeved shirt that day that I've worn in every race since. Our next race was really more of a baseline training run in Boulder, a 4-miler where they also take your mile splits. Since I had been on vacation and hadn't run since the previous week's 5K, my goal was less than 45 minutes. I surprised myself, completing in 37:50! My fastest mile was the first one at 9:13, and my slowest was the third mile at 9:53. I blame that on stopping at a water station.
Last weekend we signed up for a 5K in downtown Denver, which afterwards made us realize we should think about which races we are signing up for instead of just doing it to run. This one, which I suppose is a good cause but not one I'm really passionate about, was called the Human Rights Torch Relay. Sure, I'm all for human rights. But this was really protesting the Olympics in China. According to Paige, who we ended up run/walking with, this race was rather large in other cities, but in Denver only about 30 people showed up. Stef, Paige, and I stayed together and we finished in about 46 minutes. Stef and I were going to do a 4-mile race hosted by the Rocky Mountain Road Runners the next day in the same location, but she came down with a cold and stomach ache, so we rested.
So there is my history as of yesterday with running. I will post today's race report in a new post....
posted by Kimberly at 12:37 PM
1 Comments:
Falun Gong's faux torch relay is not grassroot. Rightwing "China hawks" in US Congress are linked to this event.
Susan Prager, the outreach director of HRTR, is also the communications director of "Friends of Falun Gong", a quasai-government non-profit founded by people linked to US Congress and the NED - it has injected over 6 million dollars in 5 years to various FLG groups to promot their intensely anti-Chinese political message.
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