How did I get here?

I was not a born athlete. I wasn't, however, a sedentary child. I took part in such activities as soft-ball, ballet, tap dancing and the swim team. I now realize my problem back then was that I lacked the drive and competitive spirit to push myself into being better at sports. I showed up to practice, did recitals and was in the slowest heats of swim meets. I enjoyed myself, but figured I would never be the best, so why try harder? I also NEVER enjoyed running.

Then something truly horrendous and embarrassing happened when I was 15. It was the last dance of Junior High and it was a BIG DEAL. My friends and I got all gussied up in our floral print formals and suntan-colored nylons (the early 90s weren't known for its excellent fashion sense). We danced and danced in our circle of six girls. We did the Cabbage Patch to MC Hammer and slow danced with boys to Unchained Melody. And then, it happened...

I don't know what song we were dancing to---perhaps I blocked it out. I just remember that it must have been fast-paced, because we were dancing in a style that involved legs flailing. One of my friend's (I don't know which one because it was dark and happened so fast) high-heeled pumps made contact with my knee and I fell to the ground. I started laughing because I was known as a a klutz and falling down wasn't exactly a surprise event. Unfortunately, I realized I was in pain. It was a pain that I never felt before and my knee kept on seizing up. The, when I looked down, I saw that my kneecap was sticking out in a way that it had never stuck out before.

I dislocated my knee not in the usual way (i.e. soccer, skiing etc), but at a freakin' high school dance!

That is so me!

I will spare you the details of the next year. Long story short: spent a summer of physical therapy and in a cast that went from my ankle to mid thigh, dislocated it again and had knee surgery the day after my 16th birthday. I have a pretty cool scar on my knee that is about 2 inches long. The trauma of the injury, however, messed with my head big time. I didn't trust my knee at all and did no physical activities. I never wanted to feel that kind of pain again.

I didn't get into running until I was 21 and moved back to California from going to school in Oregon. The irony of the situation is that for the two years I lived in Eugene-- which is practically the top running city in the United States ---I never ran.

I started slow and short: 3 miles, 4 miles and the occasional 6 mile. A few years went by and I saw a poster for a training program for the Honolulu Marathon. It was sponsored by The National AIDS Marathon Training program. They put on group training runs (all the way up to a 26 mile training run in Golden Gate Park a month before the race) and, in return, I would fund raise for The SF AIDS Foundation. It was a long 6 month program, but perfect for anyone who wasn't an experienced runner but wanted to complete a marathon.

Though I felt immense satisfaction in my completion of the 26.2 mile race, I never wanted to do a marathon again. My body hurt, my IT Band was inflamed and my time sucked: 6.5 hours! I went back to my old way of thinking: why bother improving if I am not going to win?

Fast forward to four years later and something clicked: I started getting into half marathons. I did the Santa Cruz Half Marathon, CSU Monterey Bay half Marathon, Disneyland, San Franciso and San Jose Rock'n'Roll. Suddenly I was getting competitive---though my big competitor was myself. I didn't have grand delusions of being the winner, but I didn't want to beat my last race. I started the season with the Monterey Bay run in the Spring with a time of about 2:18 and improved down to a 2:09 in Disneyland in September.

Then, in the fall of 2006, I received an e-mail promoting the inaugural Eugene marathon. I remebered my vow of never doing a marathon again. I then called my enabler---I mean, friend, Robyn. She had done Honolulu (though much faster than my time) with me and we had also met 11 years ago in Eugene. We convinced each other to sign up, and then BAM! I was on my way to training for a marathon.

This race, I told myself, was going to be different. I was going to improve my time. I wasn't going to take walk breaks. Training was NOT going to take up half my year. I downloaded Hal Higdon's training program and enterred all my future workouts on my Outlook calendar. I was going to be ready for this beast.

There was, however, a little snag in my training plan. My work was sending me to India for three weeks about one and a half months before my race. Though I was excited to go to India, I was nervous about my training program. I had an 18 and 20 mile run scheduled for the weeks I was there. I convinced myself that I would somehow train over there and bought a nice fashionable fuel belt so I could hydrate well during my training.

India was amazing: colorful, surreal, awesome food and friendly people. It was not, I realized my second day there, the best place to train for a marathon. Not only was it hot, but it was humid and the air quality was a lot different from what my California raised lungs were used to breathing. I ran a couple times outside and discovered the (non-air conditioned) gym in my office. At first I thought I was going fast onthe treadmill because my pace was 8.5 and I was not even winded. Then I realized something: they use the metric system in India. So insteady of 8.5 miles an hour, it was 8.5 km. oops.

The Eugene run went ok. I ran the whole thing, but my body was not very happy with the grand latte I ingested before the race. It was a great feeling running past the dorms I lived in and realizing that I was in much better shape at 30 then I was at 18. I also beat my Honolulu time: 4:59!

My recovery was dreadful. My husband and I drove back to California the day after the race---about 9 hours in a car. Then a day after returning, I was back on a plane for a second trip to India. A 15 hour flight is not the best post-marathon activity. I spent about a month hating running. My legs felt like lead whenever I tried to run. My mind and body were defeated.

I decided I needed a new hobby. I think hubby was tired of my bitching about running, because we suddenly found ourselves in a bike shop getting ready to upgrade my cruiser to a road bike. We bought a beautiful aqua blue Trek. When I got home, I immediately signed up for a sprint triathlon.

I loved my first triathlon and was instantly hooked. I decided to sign up for the LA Triathlon and accidentally registered for the Olympic distance. I am an ok swimmer, but could I swim almost a mile in the Ocean?

The LA Tri was a blast. The swim was difficult, but once I found my pace and the ocean was calm, I was fine.

So, that triathlon was in September. My races for the remainder of 2007 were sporadic and unsatisfying. I signed up for a couple half marathons on a whim, didn't train well and didn't break any PRs. I started getting lazy and squishy and decided I needed a new goal.

And that is what brought me to signing up for Barb's Race, the 1/2 ironman that is in just about 7 months.

So...here I go. My training starts today by deciding from now on I will walk the 11 flights of stairs to work instead of the elevator.

It's a start, right?