They're Personal Records For A Reason

As I'm creeping up on my one year anniversary of running, it's getting harder and harder to not compare myself to other runners. When I first started I allowed myself to use the excuse "Well, I just started running X months ago" when being compared to another runner. Now that I'm weeks away from my big one year anniversary, I feel like I'm even more embarrassed of my run times when talking to experienced runners, and need to remind myself that they're called personal records for a reason.

In the last week I was shocked to have actually beaten two of my previous personal records. The major of the two PR's was my 10k record, at last weekends Bellin Run 10k in Green Bay, WI. The previous 10k that I had ran was April 23rd, and finished with a time of 1 hour and 10 minutes. I had gone into the Bellin Run joking about going sub 1 hour, but I knew it was a long shot and it became more of a joke than anything. As I crossed the starting line I started off a little slow, just to take things easy. It was around the 3 mile marker that I realized that I did have a good chance of going sub 1 hour, and really started to pick up my pace. Unfortunately, I did not go sub 1 hour. But close. Really really close. My final time for the Bellin Run 10k was 1 hour and 57 seconds. Yep. That's close.

The second PR from this week is my from my 3 mile easy run. Before I left California for a couple month vacation in Wisconsin, I ran a 3 mile for time and ran it in 29 minutes and 21 seconds. It was the first time I had ever gone sub 30, and I was completely stoked! Before that run, I was never really big on timing myself for 3 mile runs with the running club. I would just put in my headphones, put on my favorite playlist and just run. Since then I have pretty much fallen in love with my RunKeeper App for my iPhone, and haven't ran without it since. Knowing where I'm at for time, distance and pace has been incredible for running outdoors. Over the last month, there have been a run or two when I was close to a new personal record, or only took off a few seconds. However, it was last nights run that I had destroyed my 3 mile time. I'm not going to lie, I was shocked to hear my RunKeeper tell me that I had ran my 3 mile in just over 27 minutes.

Even though it's pretty depressing at times to hear what other women my age run their 5k's and 10k's in, I have to constantly remind myself that I've still only been running for less than a year. Not that it's an excuse, but I have to look at it as a sense of accomplishment. I have to remind myself that with a year of training I can run a 10k in the same time that it took to run a 5k. It's truly amazing to see what your body can do when you work hard and set your mind to it.