Glory days and yester-year
Thursday, May 29th, 2008Since most of you didn’t know me in high school, let’s take a trip down memory lane and see how this whole running thing came about.
Growing up I was always on the short and thin side with great athletic desires but very little natural talent. When I hit my growth spurt around freshman year of high school I became slightly taller but just as thin and still lacking the physical capacity to actually play any sports. Growing up around the Army and needing a place to fit in, I found myself naturally drawn to the JROTC program at my high school. Actually, to back that up one more year, I first started the JROTC program back in the 8th grade while living in Germany. The high school there started an exploratory program for 8th graders — I joined because after running the mile in 7th grade gym, I didn’t want to run it again in the 8th grade. Oh the irony of it all.
So back to high school JROTC. My second year in the program I joined a team called the Pathfinders, who borrow their name from the elite military group know for advanced land navigation and other things. There were two parts to the Pathfinders; physical fitness and orienteering. These guys and girls were the most physically fit of all the cadets and while they didn’t spin rifles or carry the colors at football games, they still walked a little taller than the rest and I wanted to be one of them.
I never liked running. In fact, I hated it. I was slow and it was painful, but I wanted to be one of those cadets that got to wear the black beret and have the cool black chord on their uniform. I wanted to be able to knock out more push-ups than anyone else in the room and win medals at competitions. So I would have to put up with the running. Three times a week, after school in the hot Texas sun. After my first year I still wasn’t great (and none of us were cross-country material, but none of THEM could knock out 90 push-ups in 2 minutes either 
) but I was decent at it and started to experience the joys of running. The “runner’s high” was such a fantastic feeling that it made the workouts worth it. I think it was at this point I started buying shoes for the way they fit on my feet instead of the way they look. Side note: why are almost all running shoes white? My mom hated the fact that she’d spend 70 bucks on a brand new pair of shoes and I’d have them stained and soiled in less than a month.
So, fast forward a bit to college. Well as luck would have it, all my time in JROTC really paid off. Not only did I get a cool medal from the Army Reserves for “Academic and Athletic Excellence”, but the Army gave me a 4-year ROTC scholarship to SFA. That made choosing a school rather simple. It was in my freshman year of college that I started to really develop as a runner. Since they were paying me a lot of money, the Army deemed it necessary for me to go to PT at 6am three times a week (and you though 8am classes were bad). With my recent running background I joined a group of ROTC cadets that were training to run the Army 10-miler — and they ran the other two days of the week at 6am. I saw more of Nacogdoches on foot than in my car my first semester. Second semester I was running each mile of a 4-mile run just as fast as I could run 1. My running “career” peaked with a 7 mile run just months before the 10-miler in DC. It was after that run that we found out we were NOT going to DC because someone didn’t do the paperwork for the tickets and registration. I pretty much gave up on the whole running thing at this point and the next semester (for unrelated reason) I dropped the ROTC program and gave back the scholarship (well, not the year they already paid for ha ha).
Should we talk about me failing jogging now? A few semesters later I needed an elective so I took jogging and flag football among my meaningful coursework. It really should have been an easy ‘A’ (and it was when I retook it) but when you don’t show up to class, your going to fail the course. Except for flag football — I didn’t show up to that one (or any of my other classes) but I got an ‘A’ in flag football because the coach never showed up and gave everyone an ‘A’. Aside from that class I didn’t do much running for the rest of college, except to help other people get into it, and my first 5k.
The Jingle Bell Run in 2005 was my first race, and I was hooked. If you’ve never run a 5k before, do it. Even if you’re not a runner — the atmosphere is just so incredibly fun! Nearly 3 years later I ran my second 5k at the beginning of May which began my long journey to Boston.
I’m a bit of a visionary and a dreamer, and when I dream I tend to dream BIG. So, about a year ago I thought “I think it would be cool to run a marathon”. That quickly became “I want to run the Boston Marathon!” Then I found out you have to QUALIFY for Boston… by running a marathon… rather quickly. So, being Mr. Efficient, I decided that I would like to run as few marathon’s as possible to achieve my goal of running Boston. January 2009 — the Houston Marathon. My time? If I work hard enough (really, really hard) — 3 hours and 10 minutes which would qualify me for Boston.
I’m no where near that today, and I’m not as fit as I was in college but I think I’ve really got a shot. Maybe not in January (still hoping), but I’m only 26 and I think I can nail this thing before I’m 30. Today I ran another 3.36 miles and I feel amazing because I know it’s another small step towards Boston.
