|
 |
|
|
|
I was 38 when I started running in Phoenix. After a couple of years I took a new job in Massachusetts and read about the Boston Marathon and thought that sounded like a fun thing to do. So, I set my sights on the marathon and didn't run shorter races before I ran my first marathon. The main reason, though, that I didn't run shorter races before the marathon is that during the late 70s in Massachusetts, most of the races were on Sunday, and I don't run on Sunday.
I followed the 10% and heavy/light rules and slowly increased my weekly long run up to 6 miles, running 3 6-miles and two 3-miles each week. One day I decided it was time to do a marathon, and I slowly increased my long run to 15 miles and the other four days to appropriate distances.
By the time I ran my first marathon, I had been running for 8 years. In looking back on it, I'm glad I took that long before my first marathon, because my body was well conditioned for distance running. I ran two marathons in 1981 and two more in 1982 and had a great time in all four races. No pain, no injury, just a fun time, and I was back on the roads two days later. I spent a month after each marathon working my weekly mileage back to my previous distance.
I'm older now (73) and am slowly working my way back to the marathon distance. I'm currently running one or two halfs and one or two 5Ks each year. It will probably be 2011 or 2012 when I run my next marathon. In my 17 years in Massachusetts I never did run Boston, because I didn't have time to train such that I could cut half an hour from my marathon time and qualify for Boston. I'm retired now and have more time, and that is my goal, to run Boston.
Write a comment:
|
Posted by Kathy ..
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!