I shared this in reply to a post on the Run It Fast - Club Facebook board. Since it involved a lot of typing Ill paste it here as well! :) My first race was technically in about 2nd or 3rd grade. Lavale Sharp was bragging one day in the school yard that he was the fastest kid in school. I was extremely shy and timid, but I just couldnt let it slide when I knew he was wrong. I piped up, surprising myself even, No, you arent! I can beat you! So within minutes the rules were laid out with most of our fellow classmates watching the drama unfold. One lap around the entire school yard would determine who in fact was correct. I bested Lavale by about 8-9 strides and won. Lavale is still a good friend to this day. However, I grew up playing a lot of basketball and baseball. Running races were events that just didnt happen in my home town back then. Jackson had a marathon, the Andrew Jackson Marathon, that has been so poorly run over the years that it still only attracts 75-80 marathoners. Races just never crossed my path. I came from an athletic family but we played a lot of basketball and other sports. I never even saw people running out and about in the city. I only ever saw two people running in Jackson during my childhood and youth. One was a referee named Doss (or something like that) and the other was Jeff Keas who was my church youth minister during the time. Id see Jeff running all over town from the backseat of my moms station wagon as she ran errands around town. Jeff would later become a very good friend post college and a running mentor that I still meet up with when in town to discuss mostly running and other rumblings. Jeffs ran the Andrew Jackson Marathon a couple of times and still sports a 2:33ish marathon PR. In 9th grade I made the track (and basketball) team at an inner city high school in Jackson. I practiced hard in track all spring, and I got to run in the last couple of meets that year. I dont remember much, but I ran a 5:13 mile in my first meet (I think forgot to take a breath the entire time. It was a rush). But one day at the end of my 9th grade year two bomb threats were called in to the school. One threat was made on the west campus and the other on the east campus. School admin naturally evacuated each campus and everyone kind of met in the middle where a race riot broke out with many fights. I watched most of it from a safe distance. The SWAT team was called in where they showed up in full riot gear and fully armed. My parents, against my will, made me transfer my last three years to a private Christian school. The school didnt have a track or XC team, but I played basketball (after sitting out my sophomore year because of a dumb transfer rule). Around 10th grade I started going to Golds Gym about 4-5x a week in between basketball practices. The gym had 2 treadmills back then and there was a dry erase board where you had to write your name and wait your turn. It was an exercise in patience and fortune. Id do a long weights workout and if my name came up Id get to run at the end of my workout. So I did a lot of weights and ran a bit on the treadmill along with a lot of sprints in basketball during high school. I continued to lift a lot of weights in college and run a couple of miles here and there. In law school at LSU, I started to run beyond 2 miles and about 4-8 miles at a time around the beautiful lakes on campus. I started to develop a passion for it. The summers in between law school I lived in Athens, Greece and Milan, Italy. In Athens, my rooftop stared straight across the star lit sky at the Acropolis that was and is rich with so much history. It was built over 2,500 years ago. It really put in perspective for me how much had taken place in the USA in less than 250 years. Id go up on the roof top every night to read, write, and ponder our existence. But during the days, after work, Id walk to a couple of blocks behind my apartment to a spot and run in the most peaceful park imaginable. I was running on the same soil where Socrates held court with his pupils many years before. It was an experience that made all my senses feel alive....mind, body, soul! Upon returning to law school after Greece, I ran my first 5K race. A race that the law school hosted called Race Judicata. Im not sure if I won but I was one of the top finishers and loved the competitive cleanse that came from it. I ran a few more 5Ks here and there over the next couple of years, but my first race beyond a 5K wasnt until 2004 when I ran the San Diego Marathon. I ran a 3:39 and lost all 10 toenails. I had no desire to do another marathon. 18 months later I was bored and trained for the Tucson Marathon where I ran a 3:22. I ran a total of 101 miles in 2007 and not another marathon until October of 2008. I had this crazy plan to run 3 marathons in 6 months that would give me a total of 5 lifetime marathons. A goal and number I set because I didnt know anyone in the world that had run a grand total of 5 marathons. We obviously are a product of our environment and who we surround ourselves in our daily walk (and runs). And as Paul Harvey would say, Thats the rest of the story! #runitfast #running #marathon #ultramarathon #fitness
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:17:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015