Yes! Winner, The placard on the little wooden chest said "Winner" . You will never imaging how amazing it felt to finally be good at something!
Oh will, enough of that. I continued to run 5k's occasional 10K's and every now and then, depending on who would show up on a given day, I could actually win in my age group. Occasionally an overall award on the really obscure races. I began to accumulate quite a collection of awards and finisher medals...
I keep them all at my office.
So 5K's and 10K's are nice and all but somehow, I got information about the half - marathon. It may have been Hollowell, or somebody else who mentioned it. I think I just got on the Arkansas runner website and found it, but I registered for Midsouth half marathon. Once I was running 10 to 11 miles consistently, I figured it was doable.
This is when I decided the half marathon was the greatest thing in the world. I just told myself I was out for a nice early morning run. I ran relaxed and had a great time. Unlike the 5K where you just go out and kill yourself for 3 miles. A half marathon is longer and slower and wayyyy more fun!...Perfect.
So I finished my first half marathon and ...ok....finished second in my age division! Again I was a winner! Of course it was a small race and most of the fast people were running the full marathon that day so I'm sure it was lucky engineering on my part. That race was followed by St Judes half in Memphis where I traveled with Steve and Cindy and had a grand time and ran within a few seconds of my Midsouth run. This was before the Garmin existed to me, so this was unaided and totally by accident.
Of course as you can predict...the natural progression is The Marathon...
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