Talking About Running Makes A Post

[pendamuse]

This past week­end I ran my first 5K. I’ve been train­ing since Novem­ber of last year when it was still rel­a­tively warm in Michi­gan and I was keen to get away from the gym atmos­phere of the local Y. Also, I’ve been notic­ing that some of my favorite char­ac­ters (Harry Dres­den, for exam­ple) are run­ners. I’m eas­ily influenced.

I knew what 5K I was going to make my first, the annual Mt Olivet Sun­rise Run in Detroit. I used the Couch-to-5K pro­gram from Active.com and after a few starts and stops over a few months, I was well on my way to seri­ous train­ing. I ran 3 days a week, per the pro­gram, and I switched up between pro­grams and apps to keep from get­ting bored. When I was in New Orleans NOT MAKING A MOVIE ($#!@), I ran every other day in the 80 degree heat of 7am to stay on track. I ran through the Gar­den Dis­trict, past Lafayette Ceme­tery #1 and Anne Rice’s home, past other stately man­sions, over uneven brick pavers and gen­er­ally felt good about my training.

My home course here in Royal Oak (just around the neigh­bor­hood) increased from 2.10 miles to 2.75 as I added streets and mod­i­fied my route with­out ven­tur­ing onto the major roads. I posted my run­ning progress to FB because I needed to keep hon­est, and made run­ning friends on Nike+. watch­ing their run­ning progress sur­pass mine in leaps as I kept to my under 3 miles a run, while they eas­ily did sev­eral more. I began run­ning the Nike+ app con­cur­rent with my Couch-to-5K app to log total distance.

I drank more water and ate bet­ter lunches. I ran and sweated, pant­ing and refin­ing my still awk­ward form. I ran when it was icy and windy, pushed through the rain and once even light snow. I got bet­ter over con­sid­er­ably more time than 9 weeks, ran for longer, l earned to push myself just a lit­tle bit more every time. I imag­ined run­ning part­ners and coaches dri­ving me fur­ther. I added songs to my playlist and encour­aged friends to sug­gest their favorites (which I hap­pily added). When just the music wasn’t enough I dis­cov­ered Zom­bies Run! which added that final kick of moti­va­tion, espe­cially when run­ning in the twilight.

I was deter­mined not to fall flat on my first time out in a race. I want to be good in every­thing I touch, and deep down I wor­ried I wouldn’t even fin­ish and some­times that means wor­ry­ing more than nec­es­sary about the final outcome.

I prob­a­bly shouldn’t have.

I ran my 5K in 40 min­utes and 10 sec­onds, five min­utes slower than in my dreams, five min­utes faster than I thought I would actu­ally do.

I don’t mind tell you I got a lit­tle emo­tional at the starter shot. I’m doing it I thought as the much faster 5k and 10K run­ners sped off. I jogged at my own pace for an entire mile and *that* felt good. I watched the speedy peeps dis­ap­pear around head­stones and through the tun­nel, lis­ten­ing to my Race Day Mis­sion in my head­phones. See, I’m Run­ner 5, and me and Run­ner 8 were head­ing out to the Simpson’s Cor­ner Shop for infor­ma­tion and that’s about all I remem­ber because some­where after the first mile I zoned out. I could hear the music, but not so much the words of the mis­sion. I was con­cen­trat­ing on mak­ing the next mile, not slow­ing too much, and not let­ting my heart explode.

I do remem­ber flinch­ing when the heli­copter blew up my des­ti­na­tion, which made me gig­gle since Mt Olivet is on the edge of City air­port. I saw the fin­ish line and with Run­ner 8’s encour­age­ment, ran the entirety of the last kilo­me­ter. I got through it and fin­ished in a time bet­ter than I antic­i­pated, but not quite as good as I would have like (because I’m self­ish). There may have been more than salty sweat in my eyes when I hit the chute. As serendip­ity would have it, The Oat­meal  posted a six-part comic today about his long-distance run­ning and what it means to him. It con­nected with me as a lot of Matt’s stuff does, but this most importantly:

“I run very fast because I des­per­ately want to stand very still. I run to seek a void. The world around me is so very, very loud. It begs me to slow down, to sit down, to lie down. And the buzzing roar of the world is  noth­ing com­pared to the noise inside my head. I’m an intro­spec­tive per­son, and some­times I think too much, about my job and about my life. I feed an army of point­less, ban­ter­ing demons. But when I run, the world grows quiet. Demons are for­got­ten. Krak­ens are slain, and Blerches are silenced.” - Matt Inman

That’s why I’ll be out again tomorrow.



A respectable place for my first run - in my age group *weeps* (click to embiggen and bask in my glory)

If you’d like to be bud­dies on Nike+, hit me up and I’ll add you. I can always use a few more motivations.