I love to run. I never really thought I would say that. Growing up and all through the three high schools I went to I played sports. Basketball, football, baseball. If there was a ball involved I was game. I would play and play and play and I never really thought anything of it. I knew I wasn't the best on the team, per se, but I knew I was better than most. Especially on the football field.
I remember in off-season football my junior year we would run laps aroun the football field. Our field in Anadarko, Oklahoma is located in a sort of valley with a fairly steep slope that runs around the field in a horseshoe shape with the open end facing the fieldhouse. The coach would have us line up with the other players from our position (I lined up with the other wide receivers) and we would run up one tip of the 'U' shape, around the bleachers, the opposite endzone, the visitor bleachers, down the other tip of the 'U' and then complete the 400+ yd loop. I never really thought much of the fact that I was consistently running the circuit in less than a minute, at that time the competetive nature in me took over and all I wanted was to come in first. Every time.
Well, it just so happened that my position coach in football, Coach Williams (the best coach I ever had the pleasure of playing for), was also the head Track and Field coach. The other coaches had him leave track practice, which took place at the same time, and watch me run. He came one day with his own stopwatch and when we were done he asked me to run track on the 4x400 relay team. I blew him off that year, saying I didn't like running around in circles. What a fool I was!
Happily, I did not make the same mistake the next year. I went out for track my senior year and we eventually qualified for State. Needless to say we got our butts kicked, but considering we qualified last out of 16 teams and finished 6th it was a rewarding experience.
I didn't seriously run again for nearly ten years. When I, basically on a whim, signed up for the 2009 Disney Marathon. I overestimated my athletic ability and vastly underestimated how grueling it is to run 26.2 miles. The day before the race I was still with my family in Grovetown, GA and seriously considered not driving the 400 miles to Orlando, but thankfully my very supportive and vocal wife convinced me to go. We were going to miss the runner's expo and package pick-up so we had my brother-in-law, Jacob, pick it up for me and arrived at my sister-in-law and her husband's house just before 10 o'clock that night. I think I got something like two hours of sleep, if that much.
The atmosphere was electric. Literally thousands of people were milling around at the staging area, a fairly talented band played songs meant to hype us up, and I knew I was hooked. Only once during the race, I think it was at mile 18, I said to myself, "what the hell am I doing out here?". I knew I should've actually trained for this, the longest run I did was 14.5 miles, but there was no way I was going to let lack of training keep me from finishing. I crossed the finish line at 5 hours and 4 minutes and came to find out that my racing chip only registered at the halfway point, so I was in the very last group to start and didn't get the adjusted time because of the malfunctioning chip. Lame. But there's nothing that could be done about it.
So here I am, just over a year after my first marathon and I have a decided that at the very least I am going to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I know if I actually train for this I can drop my time sufficiently to attain that goal at the very least. We'll see how I do once I get back to the States and participate in the Chicamagua Battlefield Marathon on November, 13th.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment