Running…..I’ve always HATED running. Growing up, I was a swimmer and being in the water was as natural as walking down the street. It wasn’t until I had graduated from college and getting to the pool just wasn’t as feasible as it used to be so, I started running. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t like to do it, but it has grown to become one of my preferred methods of exercise due to time. As a father of three boys, I need to use my time wisely to fit it all in. With running, I can throw on my running gear and leave my house in under 5 minutes. In most cases I can get a good 8-10 mile run completed in the same amount of time of getting to the pool, swimming for a short distance, and getting home.
When getting into running I definitely had to start slow. I could swim for miles, but let me run a quarter mile down the road and I was bent over huffing and puffing. Slowly, over time, I was able to go a little further and faster. A quarter mile became a half mile and a half mile became a whole mile. At this point I stuck to the mile and started increasing my pace. I would continue till I felt like I had reached my goal comfortably. Once I reached my goal I would slowly increase the distance and then work again on my time. I found this method worked very well for me. Now I was ready to test my new found abilities. Here comes my first OCR. (Obstacle Course Race)
Warrior Dash D.C. here I come, 2011
In the month leading up to my inaugural race I maintained my running and figured I also need to add some weight training into my routine. I wasn’t sure what to expect in my race except for some running and some mud. I hadn’t even heard the term OCR at this point and just knew these races as mud runs. I’ll get into the details of the race in a later story but let’s just say that my running on a flat road wasn’t the type of training I needed. I was soon hooked and OCR racing became a large part of my life for the next few years.
One thing that I learned from that race was a phrase that became my mantra for the next few years, “You’ll Pass Out Before You Die”.
Stephen West