Mission Accomplished

A couple of months ago, a couple of good friends of mine decided to sign up to run a 10K. One of the girls decided that I should run it with them, too, and she printed out a training schedule for me (despite my vehement insistence that it would never happen). If you know me, you know that I am not particularly athletic, and that I am definitely not a runner. I mean, I have tried running for exercise at different intervals in the past, but I am always quickly reminded of how much I hate to run and of the ways that my body seems to reject the activity. So, I just don't run. Regardless, I put the training schedule up on the refrigerator...

...and then decided that maybe I would give it a shot. Maybe.

I was fairly certain that I would never be able to run 6.2 miles at one time. In the past, the farthest I can really ever remember running is 1.5...maybe 2 miles. And I pretty much hated it. This training schedule started at 2.5 miles. I was pretty sure I would need another entire schedule to get me to that starting point. But, I decided to give it a shot anyway. So, I did. And found that little-by-little, I was able to check off the boxes on that schedule. I mean, I was running those miles slowly (still am), but I was running them...

So, a few weeks ago, I decided that I would sign up for the race. I still wasn't sure that I would be able to run the whole thing, but I decided that I would give it a shot. I made sure to maintain a healthy level of non-commitment when discussing it with my friends - both because it was more fun that way, and because it left room to change my mind :-) But, I kept training with the only goal being to be able to finish the race.

And I did. Yesterday, I successfully finished my first 10K! I managed to run (albeit slowly) from start to finish. I was pretty proud of myself. Here are a couple of pictures from the day:

Before: smiling and wondering internally why I decided this was a good idea...

After: much sweatier, but proud of our accomplishments! And ready for some Flying Biscuit!

AJ and Lauren even placed in their age groups! They were totally surprised and found this pretty hilarious. I was proud of them!