I was thinking this morning about the fact that many of the fastest women in races are in my age category – over 30.
I was wondering about the readers here who are running longer distances – at least 10K races, if not halfs and fulls.
How long were you a runner before you began doing distances?
I started running about 12 years ago. I started off with 5Ks. I did some longer runs for a while, but when I started going too far too fast and got hurt I stopped, and I didn’t pick up longer distances until after the birth of my first daughter.
After her birth and before my second daughter blessed our lives I miscarried. Not only was it a bad emotional experience, but it was a bad physical one as well that left me in the hospital overnight and in bed for quite a few days. I almost required a blood transfusion. The fear on my husband’s face that first night stopped me cold, as he is so strong that I always rely on him to hold me up when I am scared.
A few weeks later, numb and recovering, I started running again.
Four months following the miscarriage, after having not run at all during the two month pregnancy, I finished my first half marathon.
The rest, as they say, is history.
It took about ten years for me to decide that my casual jogging was actually more than that.
How long did it take you to go from your first jog to your first endurance race?
And what do you think pushed you to do so?
In Lance Armstrongs book that i just read, It’s Not About the Bike, he talks about how endurance athletes generally have gone through something and are running (figuratively) from something.
Maybe this is how it starts. We have a bad experience and then we run, run, run. Or ride, ride, ride.
Do you know what propelled you forward? Was it a life changing event, or was it just the next gradual step from running a 5K?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and your reasonings. We all have those very long times on the pavement when we can think, and so I’m sure that these thoughts have, at some point in training, crossed your mind. If you’d like to share, we’d like to read!
I did 7 my first year. But not everyone should run marathons so often. Most people can do only 2-3 a year or else they start seeing signs of injuries or overuse. On the other hand, there are some people that can run 2 marathons in a weekend, i.e., Saturday then Sunday. That’s too much for me!
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