I ran a 10k race today. I feel so proud and so happy that I can't wait to do another race. I remember when I first started running after Paisley was born I would run 2 minutes, walk 1 minute. The goal was to eventually make it to 10 minutes. The first time I did 20 minutes I was ecstatic. And half dead. And today I ran for an hour. I can't believe how far I've come and how much I've enjoyed the process. I wasn't always a runner. I ran sprints through high school and scorned anything longer than 400m. I remember trying to run in University. I hated it. I would sweat and feel sick and usually get injured after a week of running. Then I discovered the 10 and 1 approach at the Running Room.
John Stanton, the Running Room cult leader/founder advocates a 10 minute run followed by a minute of walking. It doesn't matter of you're a marathon runner or a weekend runner, you stop for a minute and walk. It isn't long enough to really lose momentum or pace but it does prevent injury and has made running enjoyable for me.
Anyway, today I started the race on a beautiful sunny fall day. At about the 4km mark I rounded the corner to see Brian wearing Paisley in the Bjorn - he was cheering me on. I can't really describe how I felt when I first saw them both there. Proud, touched, special, unstoppable, thankful and in love - all at once. So I made some lame ass joke about Weird Al Yankovic playing on my iPod because when I feel like my heart might explode with feeling, that is what I do.
I crossed the finish line at 1:03 which since the course was actually 10.3 km I figure is about an hour for the 10k. I met both my goals: to do the race in an hour and to finish it smiling. I never thought the smiling part would be so easy.
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