Run, Forrest!

Holy crap it's a blog post! I thought I'd make my first "real" blog entry in a long time about my unexpected new hobby: running. I never planned on it happening, but over the last year I've been running quite a bit and I think it just might stick.


I've been a casual runner for several years, dating back to my cross country days in high school, but I never really approached it with the dedication I probably could have. I've always been told I have a "runner's build," which I think is a nice way of telling me I have long legs and am freakishly skinny. I didn't run much at all in college, but when I moved to North Carolina my roommates, Mike and John, were pretty into it and I found myself begrudgingly talked into signing up to run the Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon in Virginia Beach against my will and better judgement. At the time, 13.1 miles was a completely unfathomable distance to me. Cross country races were 3.1 miles. That's not even a quarter of the distance I would be running. This sport is obviously for crazy people. The guys kept me going though, and we trained through the summer and up to the race. I think I finished the race in 1:54, and it was an absolutely amazing feeling to cross that finish line (side note: it's also the reason Mr. Brightside by The Killers is my self-imposed theme song. That song started playing right as I crossed the finish line. One of those "perfect song at the perfect moment" kinda deals...in case you care). I guess the seed was planted that day, although I didn't realize it at the time. I've run a few more half marathons, 10K's, 8K's, etc. since then. I never did any better than my first race, but I always had fun running. Meg ran many of the races with me, which was a fun thing for us to do together. We had a blast running the Flying Pig Half Marathon together in Cincinnati on our 1-year anniversary. Here's us in the funny outfits we ran the race in.

For a while I was going through phases where I'd run a lot, followed by longer phases where I wouldn't run at all. Then 2010 got here. Meg and I signed up for the Flying Pirate Half Marathon at the Outer Banks with our friend Jess, who told us about it. If nothing else it was an excuse to go the beach, but it also became my reason to get back in shape after spending the last several months doing basically nothing for exercise. My training started very slowly and painfully, and included several mornings of Meg and I getting up crazy early to run around our neighborhood in hats and gloves in the dark in the dead of winter. I don't exactly know when it happened, but at some point I got motivated and started taking the race and my training very seriously. I found myself pushing harder in every training run, challenging myself each time to keep up a faster pace over a longer distance.

In the months leading up to the half marathon we signed up for a few different races in the area. One of note was the Black Mountain Greenway Challenge 10K, which is a small and very cool race in Black Mountain, NC, which is a neat little town in Western NC, just a little East of Asheville. Meg and I had run it in 2009 as well and had a blast and were excited to do it again. It's a tough course in the mountains, but I managed to finish in 14th place and won a tote bag and a sweet pint glass for finishing 2nd in my age group. I had never come even remotely close to winning a prize for running before, and it may very well never happen again, so that was pretty exciting for me. In April, I ended up finishing the half marathon in 33rd place in 1:35:09, at a pace of 7:16/mile, which completely obliterated my previous times and my wildest expectations.


Not sure how long this link will continue to work, but here is a particularly flattering picture of me coming down the home stretch at the end of the race.

I was so excited by my finish in the half marathon that shortly thereafter I did what I had sworn for years I would never do: I signed up for a full marathon. I had always joked that I never got to the end of a half marathon wanting to run another one, but I was riding the wave of motivation and decided to go for it. To keep an already long story from getting out of control, I'll just say that I continued to train pretty diligently through the summer, which was tough at times because of the heat. In the midst of training I ran on a 12-person team in the Blue Ridge Relay, which was an amazing experience but will have to be for another post because this one is getting out of hand. Mike and I ran the City of Oaks Marathon in Raleigh and finished in 3:46. You can read Mike's account here.

Photo shamelessly stolen from the Fultons' blog

My goal was just to cross the finish line, so I really wasn't concerned with the time, but I was thrilled with it. Now I have something to build on. I haven't signed up for any more races yet, but I plan on running another marathon sometime this year and scattering other races throughout the year. I think this might kinda be my thing.