The First Few Months

In my town of Oro Valley, a suburb of Tucson, Arizona there are many places where you can run. It is very friendly to bikers and to runners of all kind whether you want to run on roads or go off onto a trail. My first distance that I started at was only 1.89 miles. It was a loop around my neighbor hood that I had ran before but not at all recently. I ran with my favorite music and a pair of old Nike's that I had that would get the job done. the first run I couldn't even make it to a mile without having to stop. It was so disappointing considering I had played soccer my whole life which all you do was run. After I walked maybe 100 yards to catch my breathe I started again all the way back to my house maybe .95 of a mile finishing my run. I was in for a long trip if i could only finish a mile. After talking to my brother in law and figuring out how to change my body and make it look the best and how I wanted it to be he told me that running completely changes your bodies physic. He is one of the smartest people I know so I trusted him and continued running. After the first week of running 5 times a week I noticed that I had lost 10 pounds and was looking better than before. My family and I went on a trip to flagstaff which is much higher in elevation the next month where I found myself running still hoping the added altitude would help me in my conquest. After a week of hard transitioning to the altitude, my dad and I went to visit my sister in her new house in Albuquerque. I was very excited to show my sister the progress I had made in running. I was at that time able to run up to 2 miles with out stopping at what I thought was a good pace. Oh what a surprise I faced on the first day in New Mexico as I joined my sister and her husband for a morning run. Running up and down hills on dirt and loose sand kicked my butt to the point that I had stopped and was walking within the first mile. So much for impressing them like I had wished for. To add to it they were running in a half marathon that weekend where I got my first site of how a race day would look like and all the goodies you receive from just running. I was hooked, when I returned home I knew that I had to sign up for my first race.