"Running Just as Fast as We Can..."

Saturday I competed in the first annual Raise the Roof 5k for the Cincinnati Habitat for Humanity Young Professionals. Although it was quite a bit cooler than I would have liked, it was nice to get outside and enjoy a pretty fall day. It was also nice to place first in my age group!

This actually isn't much to brag about if you look at the times, but I was quite proud of myself. I just got back in to running a few months ago, after we moved to Cincinnati. About 3 years ago I ran a half-marathon, which further screwed up my knees, making it too painful for me to run for about 2 years.

Once I graduated and moved back to Durham, I started going to the gym. I would work-out on the eliptical, but I never felt like I was getting as good of a workout as I did when I ran. I really enjoyed the kickboxing class, but so did about 70 Duke undergrad girls. After getting kicked in the head one day, I decided I had enough of that. So, when we moved to Cincinnati, I decided to go to the running store to pick out a good pair of running shoes. Luckily, that seems to have helped with my knee problem quite a bit.

I did finish Saturday's race under 30 minutes (barely), which was my only goal. The course ended up having far more hills than I expected (and hoped). (In high school cross country we would have practices that were soley running up and down the same hill over, and over, and over again. I still hate running hills to this day.) Cincinnati is suprisingly hilly, and we managed to find an apartment in an area where I can avoid running up any hills.

Although I didn't run as fast as I could have, I did run. And I finished. And now I want to run more races. Perhaps the Flying Pig 10k in the spring...