To Run or Not To Run

No, this is not a political question! I am talking about running… real running….the kind we do if a bear is chasing us, or if we forgot to put our car in park on a hill, or we if we are just trying to prove something to ourselves. I have had, all of my adult life, a love/hate relationship with running.

Let me start by saying that I have never been, and never will be an athlete. In high school I played football one year only. I got in one play as a running back, in a junior varsity game, and promptly fumbled. Thank you Davey Kuhnsman for recovering it! I wrestled all four years of high school and had a record of something like 2-40. Ha! Sure, I lost almost always but I was hard to pin. But running, anyone can run!

My running started in my early twenties when I worked for Pfizer Inc. in Easton. They sponsored a five mile race called the Pfizer Pfive. Clever, huh?  Over the years, I competed in 5ks all over the Lehigh Valley. One of the first was the Towpath Trot in Walnutport, which was interrupted by a train!

When I worked at Crime Victims Council, the executive director formed a relay team to compete in the Via (almost marathon). She told me she liked to have me run the first leg of the race and her in the second. She said she knew I would come in close to the back of the pack and she would have fun passing people. Great!

I had a great experience running the Steamtown Marathon in 2001, a nod at soon turning fifty. My goal was to finish in less than five hours. I finished in 5 hours and 10 minutes. I still say I made my goal. There is a reason why, but that is for another blog post.

As I have gotten older, of course my times have slowed. I used to consider my goal, a 5k in under 30 minutes . Then it became 35 minutes, now it is 40 minutes. So when is it time to stop?  It is harder to train and stay motivated. Injuries are more frequent and long lasting. It is still fun, but only when the weather is perfect. I am currently training for a 5k on June 3. It may be my last one.

But in my head, there is a little voice telling me that if I stop running that means I am officially old. We can’t have that now, can we??