Running
Today I made the decision to add another subject to my web site: running.
Running has been something I’ve enjoyed since I was very young: it’s just so much fun rushing down the road or around a track as fast as you can go on your own two feet; it’s the closest thing to really flying.
I get my love of running from my father. I grew up going to watch him run road races & listening to stories of his track meets in high school and the “perils” of running on the mountain. None of his children inherited his sports prowess, but I got his insanity for running.
As a child, I was pretty good at it too; mostly because I actually knew how to pace myself (a skill almost completely lost to elementary-aged children) and I had a pretty good finishing “kick.” Both of these were partially due to my dad and partially due to the wonderful P.E. teacher I had in elementary school (he was great).
Then came the “track meets.” When I was in 6th grade or so, we started attending the Greenville Track Club’s Thursday evening open track meets at Furman, and I hated it. I don’t like racing; they, obviously, made me race. I’m a distance runner; they made me sprint, and, I was racing people who actually were pretty good at running, so I didn’t even do very well. So, after a couple of years, I stopped; I just quit running; it wasn’t fun any more. In high school, I only ran for gym class and sports.
A few years ago I started running again and I remembered how much fun it is. I picked up running again in order to run in the Paris Mountain Road Race, which I did in 2004, and I’ve been running fairly consistently ever since. I’m planning to run in the Mountain again this year, so I’ll be keeping this blog updated with my progress; we’ll see how it goes…