Just Keep Swimming

For the record, I'm not a runner. I've never been a runner. I don't see myself as a runner.

Until that time when I got really frustrated because I couldn't get lane space in the pool (my first love), and my ex was always talking about running, so I figured OK, everyone else is doing a 5K, so I should too. 

That was in the summer of 2012. 

It took me three times to actually finish C25K. Because wow, did it suck. It was hot, and sweaty, and I felt awful about how slow I always went. 

Then, last summer, I made myself keep going. Because damnit, this was a sign of fitness, and every other schmuck in existence seemed to be able to run a 5K. I figured I'd do one 5K, to prove that I could do it, and then I could quit if I didn't like it. 

So I did the 5K version of Pittsburgh's Great Race. A nice, big race, I thought. I just had to finish it at a better pace than 15 minutes per mile, and I just had to not be last. Because being last sucks. 

I wasn't last. And it didn't suck. Instead, I was quite literally smack in the middle of my age and gender division. 

Fluke, I thought. So I did it again.

Smack in the middle of age and gender. Again. Maybe I'm not so incompetent at this afterall. But I don't really run. 

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. A little bit out of the 50th percentile that third go around, but a better pace.

And that's how this crazy girl ended up running three 5Ks in three months, after never having run. At all. 

I figured OK, I can do 5K. How about 10K?

That was easier than I thought -- and still keeping around the same pace times. A little slower, but this one was in the middle of winter and I couldn't breathe, so... 

Now onward and upward to the half! My goal there is more basic: I don't care if I finish last. I just need to finish, and I need to keep pace with the marathon's cutoff time of a 14-minute mile. So far, I've kept my 12:58 pace during a 13-mile training run, so there's hope for this thing. 

But really, I'm not a runner.