lennytheweedwhacker wrote:washing machine wrote:The Houston Marathon is this weekend. A goal of mine is to get a marathon before my 40th b-day (May 2023) and this one is the most obvious candidate. Hard not to get caught up in the buzz over the weekend. All the runners are picking up their bib packets at the expo around the corner from where I work, and the route crosses a lot of my local areas. Exciting times that make me just want to go out for a run right this second.
Rooting for you.
Remind me again did you previously run a lot, or is the last year or so a new experience?
I've run since middle school. My distance in track was the half mile and the mile, and I usually placed at meets. To this day, the drum and bass beat of the breakdown for the Toadies song "Possum Kingdom" is synonymous with a running cadence in my head. All I listened to before track meets in the 90s.
In college and my early 20s, I didn't run much. I discovered bikes and did a couple of endurance races, including a 150 mile two day ride from Houston to Austin. I liked it but it didn't ever make me want to go further or challenge myself beyond that.
Late 20s I suddenly decided I wanted to run again, and kind of dedicated myself to it. Not fully, but enough to buy shoes and stay interested. That boom in my life culminated in a half marathon down the Vegas strip. Like the long distance bike ride, after I was done I was done. For a long while. I didn't train for that race and am surprised I even finished. It was an accomplishment. Something I could check off a list. I don't even remember my finishing time.
I really started thinking seriously about running in 2017. A few reasons combined here to help me get into it for real. I was getting married that year so I wanted to get in shape for the photos. Hurricane Harvey really hurt my city, including the bayou greenways, and I ran and rode them as a way to show solidarity in the nice things a city can provide, and also this thread was in high gear and I kind of got fomo. I read Born to Run and really connected with a few characters in that book. Everything just kind of clicked. But still it sucked. Running sucked and I wasn't very good at it. It was all in the mind. I never could break past that 3 mile mark or see any improvements, so I sort of gave up again. Not fully, but not a "regular" runner and certianly not in any mindset to sign up for or finish a race.
It really wasn't until my son was born in 2019 and the pandemic doldrums of 2020 combined to really help me make it a part of my life as important as breathing. There was also a fundraiser thing for an ultra runner who fell ill in 2020 (Tommy Rivs) and the whole Ahmaud Arbery thing that fired me up and showed me that running in one's life is a gift and can be Important with a capital I. Somehow I pushed into longer distances than 5k, learned to slow down and enjoy the weekly mileage, and just have fun with it. Exploring new routes and never running the same loop twice in a row helps with this. Getting new shoes helps with this. Talking in this thread and on Strava helps with this. Signing up for a race definitely helped with this.
It's been a long journey and I don't blame anyone for taking a
lifetime to buy in to running. It's certainly taken me a while.
