On being at the front of the pack.

11:35 am - Sat, Feb 18, 2012: 17 notes

On being at the front of the pack.

It is no secret that I am a slow runner. I take walk breaks. I have always been a back of the packer. And I probably will continue to be for quite some time.

However.

Today, I went to a meeting to see if I can join that women’s running club I’ve been intending on being a part of. There were women of all ages and sizes there, it was cool. After the info session, we all went out for a 5k.

I started running with this woman named Amy, she started talking to me because of some Boulder 70.3 stuff I had. And we run. There were hills. Like, massive hills. We ran through every single one. I keep looking ahead to see where the people in front of us were- there weren’t any. Amy and I were running in a small group with 3 other women. We WERE the front of the pack. Eventually one woman, the head girl, she kept going past the turnaround to do 5 miles. We turned around. So it was the four of us. We kept running, and talking, and it was really nice. No one got ahead of us. And these women were all older than me, Amy is in her 40s, and the other two seemed to be about 30 and 50.

The hills. They were almost the end of me, I wanted to break off. But I was in the front! I wanted to lead by example. It hurt. Those hills were like, incredibly steep. I took a 5 second walk break going up one of the hills but then I kept pushing and didn’t lose any time.

We finished 3.26 miles in 34:48. Not all that fast, but considering those hills, it was a really great time.

And so that’s when I decided I want to be a part of this group. Sure there are lots of beginners, and most are training for either the Garden of the Gods ten miler or a half marathon, but there are a few women that are training for the Colorado full, which fortunately falls on the same day as Kalamazoo, so I’ll have people on the same schedule. Garden of the Gods training is going to be great for hill work, and getting the chance to be a front of the packer, even if it’s just for a short distance, it’s quite a nice change!