Last year, on the Thursday before the 2010 A10, I left work early with a stomachache. The following day, I was having an appendectomy and realizing I would not be running. So, this is two years in a row that I have registered for the A10 and paid for the A10, but will not be running the A10. I'm starting to think its me.
I find this particularly disappointing because the A10 is a race that I have wanted to run for many years. Back in 2002, I worked in an office full of guys who challenged one another to run the race. Most of them had not run in years, but they trained all summer and ran the race together. I joined the office a few weeks into their training, and they invited me along, but I knew I couldn't keep up. From that time until I started running seriously in 2009, I did several stints of semi-serious running. Every time I got started, I would think "maybe one day, I'll run the A10." Yet, I never trained seriously enough to make 10 miles feel attainable.
In 2009, I started running more seriously. That year, I did my first 5-mile race and thought "If I can do this, I can do the A10." The 5-miler was in November, and I remember thinking that if I trained hard enough, I might be able to do 10 miles by the following August. Lo and behold, by August 2010 I had already run a 10-mile race as well as two half-marathons, and I was well on my way to running a marathon. So, I stopped looking forward to the A10 as a goal and started looking forward to it as a celebration of everything I had accomplished.
This year, I approached the A10 having done three 10-mile races, six half-marathons, a metric marathon, a full marathon, and a triathlon. Even after all that, crossing the A10 finish line was still something I really wanted to achieve. So I'm bummed. Better luck next year, I guess!
Stay safe, everyone!
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