I started jogging when I was in highschool... but my feet hurt so bad that I stopped doing it, I was always in pain even when I walked rapidly. So I went for low-impact exercise, like step aerobics which I love doing it.
But somehow I always felt attracted to run... be in the outdoors in some beautiful park seeing people beside me, smelling the plants, watching the fauna and flora around me, listening to birds twitting, etcetera...
When I moved to Saint Louis from New Mexico in 2001, I was so fat that I really needed to start moving again. But I had no money to pay a gym and go back to the aerobics routine, besides with the type of job I used to have in Socorro, I was always so tired to even walk around the university at the end of my very rutinary and boring day.
Besides, there was Forest Park, just across the street from my building, waiting for me... so I gave it a try, and of course my feet started complainig again... Finally, everything was solved -well, at least nowdays is not as bad as it used to be- when a doctor in Torreón prescribed a pair of custom made insoles... And then, I started... for the first time ever, I started to set "jogging goals"... until one day I - under circumstances I won't describe here... AGAIN -
was running three, five, eight km...
Then one day I asked to myself "what if I participate in one of those 5k/10k races... there's always a race organized/sponsored by an non-profit organization, women's club, cancer awareness association, whatever... I might make a fool of myself in front of all those professionals out there, but, so what?"
That's how I let myself into the
Trekkorientació last month, and the Cursa del Corte Inglés this month.
Arco and me, right before the cursa (10933 mts)
After all - I quote my friend - "you're racing against yourself" (thanks Fer!).
PS: If while watching
this video, you see a girl wearing a blue T-shirt (with a penguin on it) and a Green Bay Packers hat on her head... well, congratulations! you just found Waldo... I couldn't find myself in that mass of
56 thousand people.