Thursday, November 19, 2015

The Race, She Is Done

Running AND smiling? Yup, I've lost my mind.
This past Saturday was "The Rocky Balboa Run" in Philadelphia. This was my first ever 5k race. Actually, it was my first ever race, period. Why I decided to do this is two-fold, really. First, the guys over at NeoZAZ were doing it, and it seemed like a great opportunity to actually meet them. It was fun meeting all the guys that I've heard on their podcasts, and even spoken to myself, but have never been face-to-face with.

The second reason is more important, and that's my health. I've lost a good amount of weight over the past two years, but with my family history of heart disease, I knew that I couldn't just lose weight and call it a day. No, I had to get the dreaded "exercise". Now I've tried doing stuff at home and it never stuck, and I know that going to a gym wouldn't work because I'd find an excuse to avoid it.

Running in a race, however, not only gave me a goal (that of not embarrassing myself) but it gave me a great way to work out. I started slow, only doing a mile and just walking. Eventually, though, I got up to regularly doing more than the 5k distance, and in a pretty decent time.

Now that I'm in the habit, I'm doing the training even with no race. I am looking into signing up for some other races, but nothing definite yet*. Still, if I can keep this up, I might just get into decent shape. Not a bad goal.

Oh, if you're curious as to how I did, here's the breakdown:

Distance:          3.1 Miles
Net Time:        33:14
Average Pace: 10:42 minutes/mile
Overall Place:  1271 out of 3107
Men's Rank:     729 out of 1348

For a first attempt at anything like this, ever, I'd say I did pretty well.


* If anyone is in the South Jersey area and would like to get involved in any races that I'm going to participate in, just let me know and I'll keep you in the loop.

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