history of my running life
Feb. 25th, 2011 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ilanaramaI was an unathletic nerdy kid with hopeless hand-eye coordination, but I bicycled for fun and swim a bit; I was on the town swim team and a couple of times I didn't come in last. I had mild scoliosis and managed to parlay that into a doctor's excuse to get out of gym in junior high and high school. When I had to take a semester of sports in college I chose fencing, partly because swordfighting sounded cool, partly because the instructor was cute. (We dated for a couple of weeks after the semester was over. He turned out to be a jerk.)
After college I started dating a guy who was seriously into bike racing. He would go for a 40-mile ride and then come pick me up and we'd do a sedate 10 miles that would leave me exhausted. We moved to another state together to go to grad school in 1986, just as the triathlon started becoming popular, and I decided I might suck less at three sports put together than I did at each one individually. (Also, my boyfriend didn't swim, so he couldn't compete with me.) I hadn't actually done any running before, ever, but that didn't stop me. What almost did was my first training run, when I got horrible shin splints after 2 miles, but I persevered and managed to complete a sprint triathlon.
Over the next few years I continued to compete in triathlons up to what was then called "international distance" (now "Olympic distance") and through dint of much training got to be reasonably good, by which I mean that I usually came in about a third of the way back in the pack, and even qualified for (and raced in) the Bud Light championship held in Hilton Head, SC, although I never won an AG award, not even close. I should add that my ability came from being a middling swimmer and a pretty good cyclist. Running was my worst and least favorite sport.
In 1989 I moved to Colorado where people were a lot more serious about sports. Plus, there was no oxygen. These factors combined to put me in the middle of the back of the pack, and after a couple of disappointing triathlons, I decided my days of competing were over. I took up rock climbing, mountain biking, river rafting, skiing and backpacking. (Just like everybody else in Colorado. If you move to the state and don't pick up at least three of these sports within five years, they kick you out.) I ran, swam, and road biked a little, but just for fitness, no racing. I also got married, which is part of the reason I changed sports; these were all things my husband did, and in fact although we worked for the same company, we actually met while skiing, as we were both on the ski racing (giant slalom) team that competed in the corporate league. (He is a very good skier. I...usually didn't come in last.)
In 1999 we sold everything we owned (which as you might guess included a lot of sports equipment!) and bought a sailboat. We lived aboard and traveled for a bit more than three years, which pretty much precluded most sports other than snorkeling and SCUBA diving. I did only two races in this time, a beach duathlon in George Town, Bahamas (a couple hundred yards each of swimming and running) in which I won first place - a bottle of rum - and a beach footrace later that day in which I came in second, winning a sixpack of beer. As beer is more expensive than rum there, it was actually the better prize.
When we moved back ashore we moved back to Colorado but to a different city, and I got in the habit of running as a way to explore. We met a couple we went backpacking with, and although the other woman was probably 2 inches shorter and 30 pounds heavier than me she kicked my butt on the trail. Turned out she was a marathoner. I thought, "hmm, if SHE can do it..." So I built up to and ran a half marathon the next spring, and a marathon the next fall, and a couple years later ran another marathon. I wasn't particularly fast, but I was solidly middle-of-the-pack, which wasn't too bad considering that my training consisted of "run a couple of times a week and a long run on Saturday."
Then I decided it would be awesome if I could break 4 hours, so I tried an actual training plan which got me under the wire by more than 5 minutes at Baltimore 2008, and hey, that qualified me for the Boston Marathon, which nominally makes me a "serious" runner, right? So I felt obliged to hold up my end of it, and have been increasing my mileage, getting faster, running more races, and amassing a small but gratifying collection of trophies, medals, and schwag as to my delight I've become one of the better over-40 female runners in my (admittedly small) region.
Right now I'm still on the upswing of the improvement curve, although I suspect age will start to trump training within the next few years. (They say a new runner will improve for 7-10 years, but I'm not sure whether to count my start from 2008, or 2002, or heck, 1986.) The very best older women runners are still way out of my league, and I'm never going to get to that kind of level, but that's okay. I'm still running way faster than I ever dreamed of. When I was running 2+ hour half marathons, I daydreamed daringly about running a 1:50 - now I'm eyeing 1:35 as a possibility. I have cut almost a full hour off my marathon time! And I truly enjoy running, something I never would have believed of my future self if you'd asked me back in my triathlon days.
If there is a moral to this story (which there isn't intended to be; this is just a bit of rambling, a memoir, a nostalgic review) it is this: do stuff you like, and keep doing it, even if you suck, and you will improve. Of course the better you are at it to begin with, the more you're likely to enjoy it and train and practice and so on. But not all the people up on the podium getting awards started out as athletic prodigies who ran cross-country in high school. Some of them were nerdy little kids like me.
After college I started dating a guy who was seriously into bike racing. He would go for a 40-mile ride and then come pick me up and we'd do a sedate 10 miles that would leave me exhausted. We moved to another state together to go to grad school in 1986, just as the triathlon started becoming popular, and I decided I might suck less at three sports put together than I did at each one individually. (Also, my boyfriend didn't swim, so he couldn't compete with me.) I hadn't actually done any running before, ever, but that didn't stop me. What almost did was my first training run, when I got horrible shin splints after 2 miles, but I persevered and managed to complete a sprint triathlon.
Over the next few years I continued to compete in triathlons up to what was then called "international distance" (now "Olympic distance") and through dint of much training got to be reasonably good, by which I mean that I usually came in about a third of the way back in the pack, and even qualified for (and raced in) the Bud Light championship held in Hilton Head, SC, although I never won an AG award, not even close. I should add that my ability came from being a middling swimmer and a pretty good cyclist. Running was my worst and least favorite sport.
In 1989 I moved to Colorado where people were a lot more serious about sports. Plus, there was no oxygen. These factors combined to put me in the middle of the back of the pack, and after a couple of disappointing triathlons, I decided my days of competing were over. I took up rock climbing, mountain biking, river rafting, skiing and backpacking. (Just like everybody else in Colorado. If you move to the state and don't pick up at least three of these sports within five years, they kick you out.) I ran, swam, and road biked a little, but just for fitness, no racing. I also got married, which is part of the reason I changed sports; these were all things my husband did, and in fact although we worked for the same company, we actually met while skiing, as we were both on the ski racing (giant slalom) team that competed in the corporate league. (He is a very good skier. I...usually didn't come in last.)
In 1999 we sold everything we owned (which as you might guess included a lot of sports equipment!) and bought a sailboat. We lived aboard and traveled for a bit more than three years, which pretty much precluded most sports other than snorkeling and SCUBA diving. I did only two races in this time, a beach duathlon in George Town, Bahamas (a couple hundred yards each of swimming and running) in which I won first place - a bottle of rum - and a beach footrace later that day in which I came in second, winning a sixpack of beer. As beer is more expensive than rum there, it was actually the better prize.
When we moved back ashore we moved back to Colorado but to a different city, and I got in the habit of running as a way to explore. We met a couple we went backpacking with, and although the other woman was probably 2 inches shorter and 30 pounds heavier than me she kicked my butt on the trail. Turned out she was a marathoner. I thought, "hmm, if SHE can do it..." So I built up to and ran a half marathon the next spring, and a marathon the next fall, and a couple years later ran another marathon. I wasn't particularly fast, but I was solidly middle-of-the-pack, which wasn't too bad considering that my training consisted of "run a couple of times a week and a long run on Saturday."
Then I decided it would be awesome if I could break 4 hours, so I tried an actual training plan which got me under the wire by more than 5 minutes at Baltimore 2008, and hey, that qualified me for the Boston Marathon, which nominally makes me a "serious" runner, right? So I felt obliged to hold up my end of it, and have been increasing my mileage, getting faster, running more races, and amassing a small but gratifying collection of trophies, medals, and schwag as to my delight I've become one of the better over-40 female runners in my (admittedly small) region.
Right now I'm still on the upswing of the improvement curve, although I suspect age will start to trump training within the next few years. (They say a new runner will improve for 7-10 years, but I'm not sure whether to count my start from 2008, or 2002, or heck, 1986.) The very best older women runners are still way out of my league, and I'm never going to get to that kind of level, but that's okay. I'm still running way faster than I ever dreamed of. When I was running 2+ hour half marathons, I daydreamed daringly about running a 1:50 - now I'm eyeing 1:35 as a possibility. I have cut almost a full hour off my marathon time! And I truly enjoy running, something I never would have believed of my future self if you'd asked me back in my triathlon days.
If there is a moral to this story (which there isn't intended to be; this is just a bit of rambling, a memoir, a nostalgic review) it is this: do stuff you like, and keep doing it, even if you suck, and you will improve. Of course the better you are at it to begin with, the more you're likely to enjoy it and train and practice and so on. But not all the people up on the podium getting awards started out as athletic prodigies who ran cross-country in high school. Some of them were nerdy little kids like me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-01 02:27 am (UTC)My favorite line : "Just like everybody else in Colorado. If you move to the state and don't pick up at least three of these sports within five years, they kick you out.)"
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-02 03:58 pm (UTC)