Some 10ish years ago, I remember seeing people’s posts about “ran my first 5K!” or similar and thinking “That doesn’t seem that hard…” considering at the time I had bought a proper road bike and could easily ride the 3.1 miles without too much effort.
Well, I made the decision after I realized I wasn’t riding my bike as much as I wanted to train for a 5K. I discovered the Couch to 5K (C25K) plan, bought some proper running shoes, and tried doing this before work in Georgia’s winter. It worked until one morning it was about 40F and raining quite heavily. I decided to shelve it and restart in the spring.
I ended up completing C25K and running a 5K on Memorial Day in 2016 where I accomplished the three goals I had put forward for myself.
The first was simple: don’t throw up. I had come down with something a couple of days prior to the race but powered through it and successfully finished without puking.
The second was to finish in under 45 minutes. My time was 35:50, so mission accomplished.
The third was not to be last in my age group: I believe I was 4th of 6th in my age group, so all three tasks were accomplished.
Later in that year, some friends asked if we wanted to do the Marietta Daily Journal’s annual Gobble Jog on Thanksgiving. All of us who ran elected to do the “untimed” run, but I recorded it in Strava anyway: 39:48. I was the fastest of the group of 6 I ran the race with, which was fun.
Just over a year later, I ran the 2018 Atlanta Mission 5K in 42:44.
Of these three races, the only one I actually trained for was the first one. I’ll admit they were fun, and I probably should’ve kept running after the first 5K, but circumstances began working against me, and Georgia summers are hot.
Anyway, here we are, a decade past the first time I did C25K. I now live in a milder climate, though the terrain is hillier than where I used to live. I did mention I wanted to possibly get into fencing. Well, I figure maybe I should work on getting cardio back up to snuff instead. I heard about a local running club that seems right up my alley, so I might reach out to them sometime soon.
I need to dig my running shoes out and get some new running shorts and maybe another tech fabric shirt to run in first though…