Getting faster

Last Sunday I ran 5 miles!!! My longest run ever! Darrah met me at Oak Grove Park, this is a halfway meeting place for us. Fall is finally here so the weather was absolutely perfect! We started training in July when it was 105+ degrees so 70 degrees felt incredible!

The last few weeks Darrah hasn’t been able to run with me because she bought a house & was in the process of packing, painting & moving. It was great to run with her because when I’m running with someone it pushes me to run faster. Darrah is the greatest training partner because she encourages me & stays with me even though she could run so much faster. She has been a runner for a while…she ran a full marathon a few years ago. At the 5K mark, I was so excited to see the time of 31:20…almost a 2 minute difference from my first 5K.  Woo! Hoo! It makes me so happy to see I am getting faster!! As mile 4.5 came around I was starting to feel it… then we saw a hill ahead of us. We made it but at the top of the hill I felt like I was going to pass out. When we got to 4.9 Darrah told me we were going to sprint to the end, we did & it felt good to finish strong even though I didn’t feel I had anything left. We finished in 52:30, much faster than I thought it would be.

To say I was sore later that day would be an understatement. Every time I stood up it was a challenge to move. Am I being a little dramatic? Maybe but I hurt for a while. Even though I was sore I know it’s for a good reason.

Tuesday I was set to run 4 miles. After work I headed to the park, I decided not to run with music this time. When I don’t run with Darrah I normally listen to music but I’ve noticed that it slows me down so I wanted to see how I would do without it. After the first mile I could already tell I was running faster. Last time I ran 4 miles I finished in 45 minutes, this time I finished in 42 minutes…3 minutes faster!

It feels great to see the miles increasing and my time getting faster. 

2 months down, 2 to go

A few months ago I saw an invitation on Facebook to run a half marathon to raise money/awareness for the A21 campaign, an organization that fights against human trafficking. At first I wasn’t really sure what was going on because I was actually contemplating running this race. I thought about it for a few weeks then finally decided for sure I was going to do this. I sent a few of my friends an email telling them about my decision. All of their responses were the same…SHOCK!! In the beginning I was literally laughing at myself because I thought it was absurd. This girl doesn’t run. I ran in Jr. High but only because I was in athletics...which was a disaster! I’m not the sporty, athletic type. To give you an example we had 3 sports: volleyball, basketball & track. And we had to try out for all of them. There were 4 different teams, the A, B, C & D teams. Can you guess which one I was on? I was on the C team for both volleyball & basketball, not the worst but pretty close! I was terrible and I'm okay with that...I just wasn't meant to play sports. Well despite my non-athletic abilities I had made up my mind that I was going to run this race.

I started training in mid July with my friend, Darrah. Since I have never run before, Darrah found a running plan that has been awesome for me. It is called The Couch to 5K Running Plan, the goal is to get you running 3 miles in 2 months. I ran my first 5K on September 11^th so it worked for me. At the beginning I could barely run 60 seconds without thinking I was going to pass out.  Every time I think about that it makes me smile to see where I was to where I am now. I ran 4 miles in 45 minutes on Saturday, that’s 2700 seconds J I like the way that sounds! Now I realize that isn't the fastest time but I'm doing this to finish not to have the fastest time. Hopefully as I train more I will get faster but if not I'm okay with that. 

In the past I would have never wanted to run this race but I realized I needed a goal. The half is on Sunday, November 21st so I still have 2 months of training to get ready for the race. The reason I started this blog is to track my progress, check back if you're interested to see how I'm doing. 

So my journey continues, 4 miles down 9.1 to go.