Colleen and running

A few months ago (maybe more) I did a guest post on Colleen's blog talking about why I like to run. It's also on my blog as well.

She belongs to Toastmasters and decided to give a speech discussing some of her thoughts on running. She posted her speech on her blog and I found it very interesting. Here is a link to it.

Photo Courtesy of Paul Meyer

I agree with a lot of what she says and it's really nice to hear her perspective. She is very open and honest on her blog, and does a daily post with what she did that day and pictures she took. We get along very well but didn't really discover that until we started running. Like she says in her post, you end up talking about a lot of different things. She knows some things about me that most other people don't. I think I probably know some things about her not everybody knows. It creates a common bond. We've also found that we both like data. She's a bit more extreme than I am but we love seeing splits on the Garmin watches; analyzing the run data later, etc. She has a body media fit that monitors her activity to show how she burns calories and I think that looks really intriguing. (I think there's a monthly fee though so I probably won't ever get into that.)

She runs further and faster than I do but she's always been willing to run at my pace when we run together, and says it's better because she gets out more and at least she's running which she wouldn't have done that day (sometimes) if we hadn't gone together. Even though she ran the full marathon where I ran the half, we both felt the same way during and after. I had really bad blisters on my feet (in fact, 4 weeks later those stupid things are still peeling and stuff) and really struggled towards the end but as soon as it was over I was thinking about running my next half.

I think the one thing I wouldn't echo in what she says is the sense of accomplishment. She says, "I often heard there is a great sense of accomplishment when you finish a marathon. I thought it’d be like winning a Nobel Prize or something awesome like that. Well I’ve done that twice and ran a 50k and once I was done, I didn’t have a sense of accomplishment. I ran across the finish line and stopped and wondered why I didn’t feel any different. I had accomplished this big task and yet I just didn’t feel it..."  I wonder if this is partly because of how long she's been running and that she's run a lot of races but I hope she does get that feeling again someday.  I know, for me, especially after my first 5K, my first 5 mile, and my first half marathon, I definitely felt a sense of accomplishment.  Each time I couldn't believe that I had run that far, and with the 5K and 5 mile, I also was really happy with my times- I did better than I really though I could do.

So those are my comments on what she said and I hope my talking about it didn't keep anyone from reading what she said, (just because I guess I wrote a decent amount here) but I think that post is definitely worth a read.

Photo Courtesy of Paul Meyer

I am going to miss running with her a lot. (She's moving out of the area in a few weeks.)