I woke up at 6:15am this morning to run a 15K, which was about 1 minute too late to get into the full parking garage. Thankfully my mother drove me down to the race, otherwise I might have used that as an excuse to turn around and forget the whole thing. Instead, I tumbled out of the car half asleep and wandered to the check-in area as she went to park in a surface lot.

The 15K scared me. I’d never run that far or that long before. My training schedule had called for a 1 hour and 45 minute run a couple weeks earlier, but I’d had to bail on it because of a foot injury. I didn’t know what to expect, but in my best case scenario I envisioned long bouts of walking near the end. Worst case? I hoped I wouldn’t start crying like a little girl on the side of the road during the 10-40% chance of rain.

Before the start of the race the announcer on the loudspeaker told us it was […]

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The only thing you really need to know about the 10K I ran on Saturday morning is that, yes, there were cinnamon crunch bagels. And yes, they were even tastier than y’all led me to believe.

Take note of the man over my right shoulder who is surely thinking, “Mmmm, I wish I’d gotten one of those bagels.” I don’t know why they call it a bagel since it was really a cinnamon roll with a crunchy topping. Coming in at 410 calories, I still burned off more energy running 6.2 miles than I consumed eating it. That, my friends, is truly sublime. (We’ll just ignore the part about 75g of carbohydrates. 75 grams!)

My mom stayed over the night before the race and got up at 6:30am to cheer me on and be my official race photographer. If that wasn’t enough, she also bought me flowers which are currently on my counter being guarded by the prince from the Katamari Damacy video game. (I made him promise not to roll them up in a […]

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I don’t have a picture of myself crossing the finish line in this morning’s 500 Festival Training Series 5K because although my friends and family love me, none of them love me enough to wake up at 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday and stand in 40 degree weather at the finish line waiting for me to run 3.1 miles. Instead, here is a photo my mother brought me just last night, a photo I didn’t think existed, a photo of me crossing the finish line at my very first 5K last September.

I love how the girl next to me is casually checking her watch as I plow across the finish line with a grimace on my face in the hopes of shaving half a second off my time. This morning’s 5K is part of a series leading up the Indy 500 Mini-Marathon in May. Next month I run a 10K and the month after that a 15K. I ran this morning’s 5K in 31:17, a new personal record which beats my Irish Fest […]

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