Another item off my Bucket List

Today I ran my first ever 5K. I've had this goal in mind for a couple of years but honestly it always made me uneasy. We've heard the horror stories of people that got hurt or worse, dropped dead somewhere during the race. Last year when the babe (on the left there) told me he ran with his co-workers on the Susan Komen Race for the Cure I immediately told him: "I want to do that next year" which meant that all fears and excuses had to be put aside.

Now to some people a 5K is not a big deal, they can probably run it in their sleep. I was the biggest couch potato, I would run out of breath just walking up the stairs at work. I would pretend to go to the gym and run for 1 mile but most of it was fast walking. I knew that if I really wanted to do this I HAD to get some serious dedication and prepare, because unless you're young and in perfect physical shape, no one just gets up and runs a 5K out of nowhere. So I had been running, figuring out routes and playing with distances, inclination, terrains. When I hurt my knee two months ago I wasn't going to let that stop me.

My goal was to make it in less than 30 minutes. I went to bed last night with a lot of anticipation and a little anxiety. I woke up this morning around 5:00 am feeling like a kid that was going to Disneyland! We finally made it to the race and when it was time to start running my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. I ran the first mile pretty much alongside the babe and I started feeling tired. Almost a mile 1/2 into it he started pulling ahead and I had to let him go ahead of me. By the second mile I started counting the distance in blocks and telling myself, just make it another block, you can do this. By the time I made it back to the Gateway and I turned the corner I didn't think that I could do it, then saw the 3 mile marker and it gave me my last wind. I crossed the 5K line at about 28 minutes and I saw the babe waiting for me just after the end line and all I could do was fall in his arms and cry. I DID IT! Wow, I couldn't believe it--one of my proudest moments and another item off my bucket list!

My legs felt like Jello for a couple of hours. I posted some pictures on  like the one above on Facebook. I had never posted pictures of the babe before--not that I was ashamed, I just wanted to respect his privacy since he doesn't Facebook so to a lot of people this is also sort of a public 'coming out' yet I'm still not announcing anything, it just is what it is and I've decided to stop censoring my posts from now on and let whatever happens, happen. So I'm excited, tired but most of all feel this sense of satisfaction that I was able to do this and accomplish something that even a couple of years ago seemed so impossible!