Falling in Love Again

Thanks everyone for the nice wishes during my 10 mile run yesterday! It meant so much. And I have to admit…

I’m falling in love with running again. 🙂

It felt so good to just MOVE and to feel so alive and to feel the blood pumping through my legs! It was a brisk Sunday morning – I think it was between 30 and 40 degrees at 5am – it warmed up a bit before the race started at 7am.

But it was still cold!

Jason and I ran separately – I didn’t want to feel any pressure to run faster or slower, so we just went our separate ways. We ended up finishing only a few minutes apart. The entire time during the race I felt great: alive, healthy, well, excited and pumped up. I just wanted to finish and I wanted to be proud of myself. Even though I quit running a while ago, I still have a good aerobic base (I think) which helped me with this race. My time:

10 min/miles is really good (to me!)considering how much I haven’t been running. It was honestly one of the better races I have participated in – what helped was that there was NO PRESSURE. And yes it has always been myself putting pressure on me – no one else. Plus I think 10 miles is such a good distance: it is long and rough, but still doable. It wasn’t so long that I thought I could have hurt myself by not training properly. Again, I think all of the cardio in Turbo Jam helped me out tremendously. Here’s my finisher shirt:

They didn’t have finisher medals for the 10 mile participants – to be honest I was super disappointed! But the shirt is really nice so it was worth it J

So, I will not pressure on myself to run as much as I did in the beginning of the year, but I think I will throw a run in here and there. And I am thinking about running in this race:

Just another reason for Jason and I to have good costumes this year – we can wear them at the race too!

Questions:

1. Have you ever participated in a race? What was your favorite one? Would you do another? I can’t believe I’m saying this…but I am thinking more and more about training for another marathon next Spring – if you read my recap you know that my first marathon didn’t go as planned. I kind of want to redeem myself. But I don’t know if I can go through that whole process again. I still have time to think about it.
2. What is a “new-to-you” exercise that you would love to try? Zumba? Yoga? Running? Cross country skiing? Shake Weight? J I would love to rock climb. Jason and I went rock climbing for our first date and we haven’t been back since! It was so much fun and an excellent workout – my arms and legs burned for days afterward. I would love to rock climb more often – even if only once or twice a month.
3. What was the highlight of your weekend?

***Oh, and I the 2 times I was drunk at a police station were for DUI nights. The police department held a Citizen’s Academy – where 20-25 residents in the area could take a class where they would learn about the police dept, the fire dept, the different weapons, types of crimes, investigations. One of the nights was DUI night – where they would have volunteers (one of them being ME) drink alcohol (In a controlled environment) until you reached the limit – which I think is 0.08 (?) and then the officers would have you complete the field sobriety tests in front of the residents (walk in a straight line, repeat the ABCs backwards, etc). Let’s just say I am a total lightweight and getting to 0.08 is drunk for me! It was pretty hilarious. Then one of the officers would drive you home. It was all for education!***

Have a great day!

Holly