Running

June 24, 2012. I remember that date because it means a lot to me. That was the day that I first started running. I was 9. My friend and I sprinted and walked the majority of the race. I thought that I would never finish, even though it was only three miles. Looking back now, I wish I had pushed harder, because it would have meant that much more to me.                                                                                                                       The next month I ran another race. The night before I was so excited I could barely sleep. I set a goal that I would run the first mile. I know that doesn't sound like that much but it meant a lot to me. I went out way to fast. After about a half a mile, I was dying. But I decided to keep going. When I crossed the finish line, I was so happy. After a while, I realized that I ran 5 minutes faster than my last race. I didn't win an award but that didn't really matter. What did matter was that I worked really hard and met my goal.

That winter I trained a lot, which made me improve a lot. By spring, I had gotten down to a 27 minute 5-k. May of 2013 was when I would do my first race longer than a 5-k, the Bolder Boulder. I was really nervous because I had not trained to run anything longer than 3 miles. I felt great when I first started but crashed at mile five. Crashing means when you have no energy and cannot run any further. But I finished with a time of 1 hour and 8 minutes which is okay for not having trained at all. 

During the fall of 2014 I joined cross country. Our first meet, we were really late because the people at the front office forgot to give an announcement to let us out. When we got there we had to jump off the bus and start running. We did more and more meets but none of them were as memorable until we got to the end of the year. Our last meet was my favorite. We had to run two laps around the lake. For end of the year points, I got sixth out of about 75 people, and our team got 2nd out of about 7 teams.          


That September, I ran a half marathon. It was really fun because we took a weekend trip to Buena Vista. When we went to the race, I was the only kid there, but  it was a race, there were only like 50 people there. I was really nervous but I knew that I had trained really hard. The course was really pretty because all of the trees were changing color. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. When we were done I still had a lot of energy. I ran a 2:16:53. It was 6 minutes slower than I hoped but I was happy.

The next month I ran another 5-k. There was a huge hill at the beginning that lasted about .75 of a mile. It was really draining. It was also really hot out and I thought I wasn't going to finish the race. It turns out I did finish and with a new : 24:53. I was so excited, especially because I was really out of shape and I had do deal with the huge hill at the beginning.

Now I am running track. I mainly do distance ( the 800 and the 1600), but I may try the long jump at our next meet. I wish that I was a good sprinter, because sprinting is much easier than distance to me, but I really suck at sprinting. At our most recent meet I was kind of disappointed with my times. I ran a 7:10 on the mile and a 3:25 on the 800. Hopefully I will be good enough at long jump to compete. My dad says that I should do high jump but the first time I tried it, I jumped it like it was a hurdle and got my foot caught in the rope.