Friday, August 20, 2010

Achievement


I was a smart kid in school. I always did well in classes, and I was used to seeing A's on my report card, maybe with a B in math here and there. The first C I ever got was in 4th grade, first semester, in PE. Why the C? It was the first time we had to do the mile run. I think it took me about 15 minutes. It would have been faster to just walk the thing. I'm pretty sure 4th grade PE was when I began to hate running.

Looking back, I'm pretty certain that I had exercise-induced asthma (which I was finally diagnosed with at the age of 26). I also know that we didn't do any sort of training for this - we were just sent out to the track to run. Maybe if we had done something along the lines of Couch to 5k, I might have done better. But the mile run was always a terrible experience for me all the way through school. I was the kid who couldn't do it every single time. Running was painful and embarrassing, and I had no desire to ever do it again once I was out of school.

After my asthma diagnosis I started running, but once I actually ran a mile and proved that I could do it, I lost my motivation. The mile was where I stopped.

So imagine my sense of achievement, not to mention my surprise, when I ran 5.11k on Wednesday in 32:00, and 5k today in 34:30. I feel like a runner, and I can't believe that it happened so quickly. I'm on top of the world and so proud of myself - I want to tell everyone that I can now run 5k!

There's a race on Sunday, and I think I'm going to enter. There's no fee, it's local, and pretty small. It seems like the perfect place to put my new 5k skills to the test!

1 comment:

  1. I am so proud of you! I think you will do great this Sunday.

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