My first 10K race...

There comes a time in every man's life where he must decide 5K or 10K and that is exactly the cross road I came to this past sunday.

I guess I should start from the beginning as to what drove this alcoholic-cigarette chimney to attempt a 10k; a feat not normally attempted by someone like myself.

I was sitting in my office one day daydreaming about the big house I'm thinking to buy and what kind of flowers I will have at my wedding and all of a sudden, it dawned on me that I have everything that I could possibly hope for except for one thing.

In my 23 years of living, I have accomplished a lot; surviving an emotional abusive family, cleaning myself off of addictive narcotics, getting myself into the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization and establishing a family of four that I am extremely proud off are only just a few things on a list of hundreds, if not thousands. Mentally going over this list, I realize, everything that I have accomplished are either mental accomplishments or materialistic ones and not a single one has to do wtih my body. Over the years, I have done nothing to strengthen and prolong the use of the only vehicle for my soul. For 23 years, I have continually subject my body to crap ranging from fatty foods to tar-filled smoke.

Don't get me wrong, I have no intentions of quitting my nasty cigarette habits or curbing my wine consumption. I merely did it to boost my own ego knowing that I have everything AND I have proven to myself and the world that I have accomplished something a smoker/alcoholic should never have.

So with this ego egging me on, I started to train for the 10K about two months prior to the race. I have never been committed to anything in my life. I would do something until I was bored with it (usually within a week or so) and then I would quit. Take my diets (yes, plural) for example. I would go on this crazy, stupid, malnutricious diet to loose this spare tire I call my stomach, but then after a week, or at the first sight of a nice piece of fried chicken, whichever comes first, my commitment to my diet went right out the window and within 5 minutes you can catch me gnawing away at a piece of Popeye's chicken thigh, rubbing my spare tire in satisfaction.

But somehow running was different. Running took my mind off of everyday stress (my stomach and my fatness, for example) and gave my energy to battle evil Satan's minions I call my coworkers. So as you can see, running gave me a sense of purpose - fighting fat and destroying evil in this world.

So after 2 months of training...okay, let me interject because I just chuckled to myself. By training, I mean running and lifting on the weekdays and then drinking myself stupid and smoking myself retarded on the weekends, so basically, everything I did during the week cancelled out with my partying on the weekends. So if 1 - 1 = 0, then my effort was in vane. But nonetheless, the last two weeks before the race, I cleaned myself up (partying only once) and rested.

Sunday came quickly and at 6:30am I was up and getting ready for my race. At 7:30, we (Me, Amanda and Jonathan) left the house and went to the race site to pick up my race packet and number (275). At 8:30, I was off.

I started off the race going at an incredible speed; let's just say when I hit the one mile marker, I clocked in at 6:45 (yes, that's 6 minutes and 45 seconds). That's way fast and I realized that there's no way in the fiery pits of hell that I can maintain my speed and when I dropped my pace to what I figured as about 9 min/mile, my calves started to cramp a little. At 2.6 miles, my calves crapped out and I had no choice but to walk. Because the Rockville Run Fest has 5K runners and 10K runners, so at one point, the race course splits into two; one for the 5K runners and one for the 10K. You do not understand the dilemma I was in. I was so exhausted that I just wanted to go home and sleep. "my poor legs, how unfair it is for me to put you two through so much; we should go home," is what I kept saying to myself. For 0.3 mile I contemplated quitting and just hop onto the 5K line, but for some odd reason, I decided against it and kept on running, or rather walking as I was still in pain. I rested and out of no where, at around 3.5 miles, God granted me a second wind and I ran the rest of the way, going at a decent speed. Upon crossing the finish line, I clocked in at 56:37; I had finished the race, and what's more? I did it all under an hour; I was elated!

Now my goal for my next 10K is under 50 mins. Go me, I am so awesome!