Some background

Throughout my childhood, I was pretty active. Over the years I took dance lessons, ran around our yard, and did aerobics. During high school I discovered running, and though I was not particularly fast, I ran on the track team my freshmen and senior years. Sometime during college, a competitive streak kicked in. I can't quite explain how or why it happened; I just remember running around the track in the IM building and feeling compelled to lap a few people each time. If there was a guy I could pass, all the better.

Running was a great way to let my mind wander and/or figure things out. Running was also free (save for the shoes), which was important for a poor college student.

Towards the end of college, I ran in my first 5K. I remember getting beat by my then-preteen cousin. I just could not get through the entire 3.1 miles of that race or the next few without walking a few times, which really bothered me. For whatever reason, I started running less and less. Then, in 2000, four years after I moved to the Burgh, I decided it was time to get serious about running again and start to run in some 5ks. (Note that when I first wrote this post, I thought I had run in my first Burgh 5k in 2001. Thanks to Google listing my time for the Race for the Cure, I discovered 2000 was the year.)

The subsequent posts chronicles some of those races as well as my general experiences with running over the years. It is worthwhile to note that I last ran in 2002. I got pregnant at the end of that year and pretty much stopped running, save for a brief stint in 2006. Until this fall, 2009. More on that in a future post.