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When college and high school athletics ended, I was concerned about my athletic well being. I relied on competitive sports to stay in shape and keep me active. Without competitive sports, it would be very easy for me to start putting on the pounds and let myself go. In fact, as I get older it seems easier to do that even if I am active. But, I want to try to stay in the best shape I can and still maintain a regular life, so I turned to running.

The first thing I like about running is that it seems to be the best overall body workout available. Some have argued that swimming is better, but I still think I've read that running is better. Also, whenever I've been in good shape in the past, those have been the times that I've run best. The only bad points about running are that 1) I'm not good at it and 2) It can be boring.

I began running a few years ago starting with a mile and up to 3 or 4 miles on long days. Then, I abruptly increased the dosage to 4 miles on the short days and up to 45 minutes on long days, then an hour, and finally one hour and thirty minutes. I did that a few times a week for another year or so and then early in the year 2001, I saw that the 2nd Annual Nashville Country Music Marathon was scheduled for April. I signed up for the marathon on an impulse and started to train. I made sure I told a lot of people I was running in it so that I would stay committed to finishing.

I trained for the marathon and finished with a time of 4 hours and 55 minutes. Admittedly, this time was slower than I wanted, however, I am still proud of it since it was my first marathon, I'm not a good runner, I have asthma, and the Nashville marathon is very difficult compared to other marathons because of many hills. Many other runners who had completed the Chicago marathon reported running with times 20 to 40 minutes faster than the Nashville marathon. In hindsight, I also didn't run enough distance in my training. My longest run before the race was around 13 miles and it should have been around 20 miles.

I still run and I plan to run the Nashville marathon again and then the Chicago marathon. Hopefully, I'll continue to improve my performance, my times, my health, and my physical appearance.