My First 5K Race

I had the StairMaster set up all the way to the max where all you see was red dots across the board.  I was stepping on it fast and furious, sweat flying all over the place. It was amazing.  I was losing weight literally about 1/3 of a pound every single day. But that near fainting spell on the StairMaster scared me enough to stop and vary my routine.  I moved on to the treadmill. At this point I really did not like it.  Twenty minutes was an eternity.  It was all I could do to stay on.  I even covered the control panels with a towel so that I wouldn't see how much time had passed.  Then I would peek to find out only 3 minutes had gone by. I dreaded it each time I got on.   My attitude soon changed, however. 

I was tagging along with some of my old college roommates one day to SF. The had planned to run a 5K with the Bridge to Bridge 10K.  I was indifferent and I went along for the ride.  I was even dressed inappropriately for the race, that I had to borrow clothes from one of the girls.  I made do with oversized sweatshirt and sweatpants.   I had no idea what I was getting into.  I've never ran a race in my whole life.  The gun went off and I followed the crowd.  While running, I thought to myself, "We didn't even talk about where we were meeting at the end of the race." Mind you, this was the age before cell phones.  I tried to run as fast as I could.  I remembered how hard it was to breathe.  My quads burned.  All I could think of was when will this be over? Why  does it hurt so much?  My lungs felt like they were going to implode.  But one thing I didn't think about was to walk.  The thought didn't occur to me.  I was too worried about not being able to find my friends at the end.   When I crossed the finish line,  I didn't see the girls. I started to get worried.  Then one by one they started to come in. One of the girls, was surprised to see me.  "You finished?" she asked.  What was your time? The clock said 26 something.  She said,  "You beat all of us."  Little did she know that that was not my plan.  All I wanted was to make sure I didn't lose them.  This 5K sparked my interest in running and a seed was planted. Hello 5Ks.