Summer of Firsts - My First 5K Race

Five years ago, if you would have told me I’d run a 5K, I would have laughed at you. Okay, maybe not to your face, but I'd definitely be laughing inside.

 Not because I wasn’t active - I’ve always loved to bike, swim, hike, etc.- but mostly because running is just one of those things I was never able to do very well.


I’ll never forget the annual impromptu mile run they would make us do in elementary school gym class. There was no training or practice, whatsoever.

It was like; “Hi kids, you’re here, now go run a mile. And don't think about stopping or we will yell at you and blow our whistles on our comfy little bench here.”


I was that kid hyperventilating in a bag and sick to my stomach the rest of the day (there were actually several of us). I just couldn’t breathe when I ran.

The thought of running thereafter tended to conjure up painful and even kind of embarrassing images for me.


As I got older and started living more actively and working out, running was still not amongst my usual workout activities. Sometimes I’d attempt to run on the treadmill for a while. I remember being so excited to do just 15 minutes on a treadmill. That was a big accomplishment.


Regardless of how much I pushed myself, eventually I always began to choke on my own breath. I would be panting for air - my lungs on fire and my chest compressed. I knew it could not be normal. My legs and body were not at all tired, but I just couldn’t get past this wall I would hit with my breathing.


You know how they tell you that when you are working out, you have a safe heart rate when you can still talk to the person next to you? Well, the breathlessness I experienced when I ran prevented me from saying so much as one word. Sometimes my face would be bright red or my fingers would get tingly. I simply felt like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Sometimes I would cough a lot when I was done and my nose would run.


Last spring, when I was recently divorced and living at my parent’s house, I was determined to pick up some new healthier habits. I got a second wind.


I thought, well I have more time on my hands, why not give it my all and see if I can finally overcome this breath thing and become a runner? I read articles about different techniques and I talked to runners.


I had always thought it would be amazing to run regularly: The changing landscape, the wind in your hair,  enjoying a sunrise or the smell of spring or fall, all while getting a great workout.

I wanted to be a runner so bad I could taste it.

I had already gained confidence by getting up to a mile on the treadmill, but I was bored staring at my parents’ basement walls. So, I thought I was prepared to take on outdoor running.


I thought wrong. I got around one block and had to stop. I also tried running around a small lake on campus where I work and could only get like a third of the way while students breezed past me with ease. I remember seeing them pass me twice and they were still not breathing hard, and there I was, a third of the way, wheezing like a dying person.


I thought; what is going on here?


I was disheartened, to say the least. I sulked back to my treadmill.


Later when spring turned into summer, I was telling my little sister about my experiences and she mentioned how she had the same problem and her doctor diagnosed her with “exercise-induced asthma” and gave her an inhaler.


I thought: why had I never heard of this? It sounded exactly like what was going on with me! I just thought it was my own endurance issue and never thought to get checked out at the doctor. Duh.


Fast forward a year later and I have my own Proventil inhaler that I puff before running. It definitely has helped. It doesn’t take it completely away, but it makes running bearable. I still struggle with my breath when running -- I have good and bad days. However, I’ve greatly improved from where I was a year ago.

I had a great time running on the beach in Florida in October, something I never would have been able to do before.


Now I'm to the point where I don't even bother with treadmills unless I absolutely have to for some reason, because to me it is nothing like real running. I work on a university campus and in the winter I use the tracks at the gyms here.


Most of this year I ran two miles several times a week, but I just recently got up to three miles...the week before the race, which is 3.1 miles! I guess I needed that push.

So let’s get to the event in question.

It was a humid morning in the beginning of June when Kyle and I went out to run the Sunburst 5K in South Bend. He was awesome for running slow with me for moral support - if he tried he could probably win that race.

And here’s the kicker: I forgot my inhaler. How dumb is that? The one thing I really needed to remember and I forgot it.


I was determined to complete it regardless, and I did.

My main goal was to keep a steady pace and not try and run fast and burn myself out. Inhaler or not, if I try to run really fast my breath goes haywire. I started at the 9-minute mile marker and was excited when I noticed I was passing people. Then halfway through, when we hit a hill, people all around me were stopping to walk (OK, some of them were kids, but still!)

I am not the fastest runner - especially without the inhaler - but when I saw that, I knew my training had paid off.


Kyle and I were just fine, high-fiving each other up the hill.

I could tell that many of the participants had not trained or prepared to run a 5K. I knew that all those mornings I got up early to run had finally paid off.
Even passing so many people, in the results I still ended up at a pretty slow pace of 35 minutes. Maybe I would have pushed more if I'd had my inhaler, I don't know. But I learned a lot from that experience.

I remember in the spring when I was breathless at two miles, and worried I’d never be able to get to three miles and finish the race. Now that I know I can do it, I’ll be running three miles at the minimum unless I’m having a bad day or short on time. Three miles doesn’t seem like a lot to marathoners, but coming from where I was a year ago - 15 minutes on a treadmill and breathless!? - It’s a huge accomplishment for me.


Now, I know finishing is no problem. Even without the medicine. 


Give it another year or five – who knows what I’ll be able to do?


A friend said she was running the Sunburst on her Facebook page, and a younger relative commented; “What’s a Sunburst?” You can tell she’s young.

South Bend residents tend to know what the Sunburst is since it’s been closing roads and stopping traffic since 1984. More than 7,000 people participate in its ten events which include a marathon, half-marathon, family walk, and, of course a 5 and 10K run. It was really cool to be a part of the event and I’ll definitely be going back every year.


Someday, I’ll be running the 10K :)


On a side note, have you seen this snarky Q&A page on the Sunburst website? Having directed a race myself before (a fundraiser for my job), I find it absolutely hilarious. The dog thing especially cracks me up.


How can you not laugh at that?

Summer of Firsts: My First Triathlon, will be the final part in this series. It will post the second week of August. Hopefully I can finish in two hours (without drowning, haha), since I'm taking students to see Beauty and the Beast on Broadway in Chicago that same day! Wish me luck :)

My Summer of Firsts - Scuba Dive Part 2

Scuba Dive, Part Two: Barron Lake Dive. (PS I could not find a pic that would illustrate this entry, but I think this poor dog will suffice.)

My first dive was absolutely terrifying. We'll get into that. But, first, the details of the day.

Barron Lake is a little dirty lake in Michigan that happens to have a huge dropoff, so it's a great place to practice diving. I was to do two dives that morning: the first, just swimming around and getting used to it. the second, completing some skill sets underwater.

It was 60 degrees, overcast and cold on the morning of my first dive. I had two (fitting) wetsuits though, so I actually stayed warm this time.

I felt prepared that morning as well - I had a good night's sleep, good breakfast, I was not too caffeinated, and I had brushed up on the textbook basics the night before. I may be spacey at times, but I'm not one to make the same mistakes twice.

The day started going downhill, however, when I was given a new "buddy" or dive partner. Because Kyle was just doing a re-certification, his dive plan was different than my group's.

There were six people in my group. The partner they gave me was a quiet, laid back young man who didn't seem real educated on diving. Now, I'm not going to say I was an expert, but at least I knew that my goggles needed de-fogger and how to properly put my fins on. (Even though he had gone through the same pool course I did, he seemed like he didn't know any of these kinds of basics).

He even left his tank standing up on a grassy hillside, where it could easily fall and explode (a big no-no), and wandered off to talk to someone until I went to get him and told him I had laid down his tank for him.

In the pool, Kyle had served as my buddy, and I kind of liked having a person who knew what they were doing and could refresh my memory if I forgot something. Plus, I know Kyle cares about me, so in an emergency situation I can assume he will look out for me.

This new buddy, however, I wasn't so sure about.

Since the lake was so murky, the six of us were told to hold on to each other's SPG, which has all of our dive information on it, including depth and amount of air left in your tank. Which meant that he was supposed to watch my air and signal to the instructor if it got low. This guy seemed seriously inexperienced and a little slow (everytime they would say, "get with your buddy" and do this or that, I had to lead the way, otherwise he would just kind of stand there.) Not suprisingly, I figured he would be more concerned with getting comfortable diving rather than worrying much about my air.

I admit it was probably a good learning experience for me to have new buddy and be forced to rely on my own memory, but it certainly did not do anything to soothe my nerves. It was highly unlikely we would run out of air with two short dives, but the last thing I needed was some sort of paranoid fear about my air level in the back of my mind while we were at the bottom of the lake.

To add icing on the cake, the experienced instructor that owned the dive shop and taught us our pool skills said he was training someone and she would be taking us on our dive that day so he can observe her teaching us on our first dive.

I thought, "Greeeat. Now I have an inexperienced buddy and an inexperienced instructor. I am so dead."

But no time to think. All of the sudden we were going under.

We were to dive off and down over the side of the cliff, which was a sudden dropoff into a dark, murky brown-greenish depth.

I expected to feel a little nervous. I expected to have some issues clearing my ears, and maybe some buoyancy troubles.

What I didn't expect, however, was the loss of my eyesight completely. I was blind. Have you ever played that game where you get blindfolded and someone leads you across a field? Scary, huh?

Try doing that swimming.

They told me it was going to be murky.

By "murky," I thought that meant fuzzy images, cloudy water, etc. In this case, "murky" meant blind and dark and black as a cave. I could not see my hand in front of my face.

When you are blind, how do you find your bright yellow BCD  inflation button that takes you to the top when it's time to go up? When you are blind, how do you see your instructor's hand signals or signal to your instructor if you are out of air or some other problem?

When you are blind, how do you know if you are floating right side up? (And no, I could not see the bubbles)

Hint: You don't. Somehow you just have to figure it out on your own.

I tried my best to hold onto my instructor's SPG and trust in the situation. For awhile, I thought I lost my buddy. I thought he had done something stupid, like let go, and then got disoriented and floated away from the group.

I thought, "Nice. First dive and I lose my buddy. We are supposed to watch out for each other's safety. Crap, I'm going to flunk this. What kind of buddy am I?"

Turns out he was never gone. He said he held on the whole time -- I just couldn't see him.

There were small, slight, quick moments where we were swimming and passed an area that was a little clearer, but they didn't last long. Looking back, I think those were the moments of light the helped me to keep my sanity.

Then it felt like we were stopped on the bottom, and something happened. Amazing how you can sense things without hearing or sight. Through only my sense of touch, I knew something was wrong.

I didn't know why we were stopping or why we were huddled so close, because (and I found all this out later) my instructor's fin had become lodged into the black muck, kicking up a cloud of fine black mud in the water that looked like smoke engulfing us. Except smoke blows by and this never went away. A couple of times, I felt myself floating around --- this way and that ---- sideways, etc. I completely lost my bearings.

I had to give up my worldly comforts of my sense of balance, safeness, and sight. I had to rely only on trust.

So there we were, floating in blacker-than-blackness, and stopped. There was some dizzying arrangement of hands and fins and bodies and I think we were a little tangled up. But it was obvious we were supposed to be stopping for some reason.

We were there a loooong time. It was probably only like five minutes, but it felt like eternity, because I didn't know what was going on. I thought, something must be seriously wrong for us to be just stopped here. We were supposed to be just swimming around and coming back.

A whole cornucopia of ideas flittered through my mind: Maybe my instructor had blacked out and we were all just sitting there, connected to her, waiting for her to guide us somewhere....until we all inevitably ran out of air. What a story this would be for the papers tomorrow.

Or, maybe someone was having a seizure or was out of air. Or someone was stuck on something.

I can't even remember what else crossed my mind, because I think I went to my happy place and said some prayers at that point.

I find out later that the guy connected three people away from me had almost lost his weight belt -- it had loosened and dropped around his ankles. Through just hand motions (not signals, because you couldn't see) his buddy had grabbed the instructor and showed her what was happening. It took her a while, but she re-secured the weight belt, so that is the reason we were all sitting there waiting.

When I started to feel us rising, and could actually see my instructor's face with the thumbs-up sign, I could have kissed her.

When we ascend to the surface and into the sweet, sweet air, my buddy looks at me, wide-eyed.

"I really freaked out for a minute there," he said.

For once, I agreed with him on something.

Thankfully, my second dive that day (can you believe I did it again?) was to a completely different part of the lake, and it was more clear and relatively uneventful. I could actually see things. I felt much more comfortable and even explored a little, picking things up from the bottom and completing my skill sets with ease.

After getting through that first dive, I seriously felt like I could do anything. Oh, how I long for the clear salt-water lagoons of Bora Bora!




Next week's Summer of First post: My First 5K race!