6-month check-up

So, as June comes to a close I have been considering my New Year’s Resolutions. My theme for the year has been “health and control”, but would you like to know a secret?

I had to look up my New Year’s post to remember what the heck I had laid out for myself for this year. Safe to say, I have not been good about keeping up with all of these crazy goals I had set for myself… save for one.

…Thus my goal to improve my overall physical health! I plan to do this by training to run a 5k per month (Starting in February – had a minor setback for January) for the entire year of 2013.

Hi my name is Ashlea, and, maybe, just maybe I now could call myself a runner.

I don’t know really what makes someone a runner, but I do know that I have successfully completed 4 5K races so far this year, with improving times. I know that I had to replace running shoes this past weekend for the first time in my life. I know that I have been consistently running at least 2 times a week for almost this entire year. I know that I have 3 more 5K’s coming up in the next 5 weeks. I know that I just scheduled my first ever 10 K for October. I know that I have more endurance and feel stronger than I did a year ago. I know that the first time I ran 1 mile without stopping, I nearly cried with happiness. I know the first time I ran 2 miles without stopping I felt empowered and unstoppable. I know that I am looking forward to the moment I finish 3 miles without stopping. So I don’t know if you would consider me a runner, but I certainly do.

Let’s take a look back at my running experiences this past year –

I started off at the Hot Chocolate 5K back in November 2012. My friend Alli convinced me to do it because there was chocolate involved. It was a huge race – like marathon scale (says Alli, I have no idea how many people would be at the Chicago Marathon) – there were nearly 40,000 people there. I trained for this one because I didn’t want to be horribly embarrassed running with experienced runners. Turns out I was nowhere near Alli anyway since she started in A corral and I started waaaaaaaaay back in Q.

Next up was a race in March at Blackberry Farm. This was kind of a sad, pathetic race for me. I went to the race alone, ran it, and jumped in my car and had to go straight to church for Easter rehearsals. I felt kind of awful afterwards and struggled through this one - maybe because I knew no one was at the finish line? I am not sure, I didn't ask anyone to come and the hubs is a tax accountant - anything I do in mid-March, I am on my own.

In April, I went to Texas to visit my college roomie Janna. We had decided to run the Digital Race – Houston, a night race. We thought it would be great, I bought light up tutus and stunna-shades and we went decked out in neon. This was the most disorganized race I’ve ever been too! We waited nearly 40 minutes for it to start, there was no bag-check, and the course was not clearly laid out. We ended up doing more walking back and forth to the car than running. It was only about a 2.5 miler, but we walked nearly 3 miles back and forth from the car! It was an experience that’s for sure!

My May race (actually ran on June 1) was a tiny 5k sponsored by a local high school. Brandon ran it with me – well he ran it way ahead of me. This race was small, but well organized, except they did have a malfunction on the timing mechanisms, so no official time for this one. They also had Olympic runners Tim Catalano and Adam Goucher there because the school studied the book they wrote on running this past school year. It was really neat to see a smaller, local school host this type of event.