Signed up for my first race

I began running in maybe 2016. At the time is was mostly to lose weight. I had switched to a fully vegan diet before this and was steadily making decisions to improve health in a variety of ways. When I first started running I used whatever shoes I happened to have in my possession. They were a brown pair of Sketchers sneakers that were 2 sizes too small. It wasn’t long until my legs ached to high hell. And this was only going maybe a mile out, stopping for a short walk, and then galumphing back to the start. Not great.

The pain I had shot up through the sides of my legs and partially in my knees. At first I couldn’t understand what was going on. Then it dawned on me that the shoes were not right. So I went to Target looking for a new pair of shoes. Basically I bought the only pair of shoes that had the word ‘Running’ in their name.

“Well, if it’s got ‘Running’ in the name, then they must be good for running, right?” (They actually held up pretty decently)

At the time running was simply a means to an end. A means to lose weight. And it worked. Quite well in fact. That, along with a vegan diet, shed pounds faster and more efficiently than I could possibly believe. And soon I began to run without stopping. Go out one mile, then return for the second mile. Then I got to three miles. Then I went from 2 runs to 3 runs a week.

Once I got to 3 runs of 3 miles a week, I considered what I thought to be an impossible feat for me―a 5 mile run? (gasp!)

I figured for a “long” run, I should plan to do it on the weekend since it would take me time and I figured I’d be wiped out afterwards. So it would probably be good not to be drooping tired at work in the office or lab (I was a graduate student at the time).

And then I got to 5 miles. I kept it up for the rest of the time I was in Lincoln, NE.

Fast forward 5 years, past the postdoc and into the post-postdoc, and I started to increase yet more. While a postdoc I increased three runs per week to four. The fourth was more a “recovery run”. I.e. run a little slower, lighter, not so far, just to work out the stiffness in the leg muscles. When I got to Galveston I kept this pace, but then I began to wonder…should I increase even more?

I had already increased my 6 mile run to seven when I moved here, simply because that was the easiest landmark to find on my route. (I should say I was/am running at 4:30 AM, so everything’s dark; meaning the landmark needs to be quite obvious to turn around at)

This summer I went a little overboard, going for 3x 7 mile runs and a 10 mile run. Eventually this caught up to me and I ended up with plantar fasciitis. Basically you walk like a zombie in the morning but afterwards you can walk just fine. It’s quite weird because it gives you the impression that everything is just fine since it’s only that small sliver of time that there’s pain. Though eventually if left untended it can get worse. I was probably on the cusp of waiting too long to do something until I figured out what was going on. Soon I was stretching three times a day to get the muscles un-tightened, icing the bottoms of my feet almost whenever I can, and recently I found plantar fascia socks at Walgreens that I sleep in. So the plantar fasciitis is essentially gone, and now I’m getting back to where I left off.

But in all this time I’ve never actually ran a race before. I’ve thought about it. Briefly. Very briefly. Most often I would be out on my morning walks and then see a race and think, “Ah, I should have signed up for that!” But normally I’m just not paying attention or seeking when or where these races are. So I never hear about them.

Recently however I’ve been running with a couple of different groups, so I’m hearing all about them all the time. So, I decided, what the heck, might as well run one. Next week I’ll be running my first race, a 10K over the causeway connecting Galveston island to the mainland. It’s called the Toughest 10K, which I’m thinking is due to the fact that it is crossing the bridge and so somewhat ‘uphill both ways.’

I guess I’ll see how it goes next weekend. And, who knows, maybe I’ll do something that I would’ve never, ever, ever, ever thought I would have ever thought of doing―maybe I’ll run a marathon someday. (Galveston marathon is in February)

–TR