Run On

Believe it or not, we've become runners.

Yep - you read that correctly....RUNNERS! (We're actually still pretty surprised sometimes too!)

It all started back in the middle of the summer, soon after we moved into our condo, when we used to go for peaceful walks along the Katy Trail. The Katy Trail is a 3.5 mile long walking/running/biking path that runs through the Uptown and Oak Lawn areas of Dallas (it actually used to be an old railroad track that ran through the city!). 

Here's a map of the trail:

Well we used to be the walkers on the trail. The walkers who were perfectly happy to let those crazy runners run right past us.

Then one day, we decided to try a slow jog, just for fun. What we discovered was that neither of us was very good at running. {Biiiiiig shocker!} That first day I don't think either of us could run a full 1/4 of a mile!

Well for the next few weeks, just about every day, we would walk to the trail and then run as far as we could until we needed to stop. Then we'd walk a bit more and run again. On the weekends we had more time for longer runs (with walking in the middle). Eventually, the running parts got longer and the walking in-between got shorter. 

It was about this point in time that I suggested we sign up for a 5k. Crazy? Yes! But we did it - and all of a sudden we had even more motivation to keep running! In September, we signed up for the Dallas Turkey Trot, an annual race that goes through downtown Dallas on Thanksgiving morning. A 5k is 3.11 miles long and my goal was to be able to run all 3.11 miles straight without stopping in the middle. 

Between September and Thanksgiving we ran a lot. Like almost every day. And every few days, we'd hit a new milestone: running a full mile without stopping, running 1.5 miles without stopping, running 2 miles without stopping! It took us until the week before Thanksgiving to run a full 3 miles without stopping...but we did it!

On Thanksgiving morning we took the DART to downtown Dallas with hundreds of other Dallasites - yes, hundreds! The Turkey Trot has over 11,000 participants...so it was crowded, to say the least!

We had our official bibs, pinned to our shirts:

And our official timer chips on our shoes:

Did I mention that it was crowded?? We spent about 25 minutes shuffling through the crowd to get as close to the front as we could...and we were still pretty far back!

When the race started it literally took us 7 minutes to actually cross the start line! Fortunately, our chips didn't start timing us until we crossed that line! However, after we did cross the line, it took us another  10 minutes or so of shuffle-run-walking before we could actually start running!

Once the crowd thinned out, we were able to run at our normal pace...and it was fun! We ran through all of downtown, past crowds standing on the sideline, and even past 3 or 4 bands that were set up along the way to cheer people along with music.

I have to admit...I was getting really tired towards the end of the race, but Taylor kept me motivated and going and it was so much fun to race across the finish line past bunches of cheering people!!

We crossed the line at the exact same time and both finished at 00:32:48. Not too shabby for our first 5k ever!!

Here's a post-race picture in front of the finish line {please excuse the fact that I clearly look like I've been running for 30 minutes!!}:

After this picture we promptly went over to the food tents for celebratory bananas and yogurt. You gotta love races :)

If you asked me 6 months ago if I thought I (we) could ever run a 5k, I would have thought you were crazy! Now, we're pretty much in love with running! This felt like such a major accomplishment and I'm so proud that we did it! Now we're on to planning which race we're going to run next....Taylor wants to do a half marathon. I used to think that was crazy too, but I'm starting to come around. Nothing is impossible!